Early May in the Garden

The garden challenges and successes continue to battle and I’m not sure which is coming out on top…  The strawberries are doing well now that we supplemented them with some healthier plants.  We had to trim off our first runner last weekend and continue to pick off the overambitious blossoms.  The potatoes are, for the most part, growing and we continue to cover them.  One square seems to still be dormant, so that may be 4 plants we don’t get.  If in another week or so we see nothing, we will refill that square and put in another type of plant.  The asparagus continues to grow into feathery sticks which it’s supposed to do, so that’s good.  The peas are getting bigger each day, so I tied some string to the wooden dividers to guide them toward the fence.  Two of the three cauliflower plants decided to bite the dust since the plastic touched them when it was too cold, so I replaced them with some cauliflower plants I got for a bargain at Rife’s Market in Grandview.  I placed the extra cauliflower plants back with the raspberries since they don’t grow well in containers.  The spinach seems to be holding its own along with the carrots.  The big downer was that we lost our second batch of lettuce transplants again to the cold.  We transplanted 20 head lettuces and 20 leaf lettuces over the weekend and forgot to cover them when the frost came, so we lost every one of them!!!  We have some more seedlings in the basement but I am going to cave in and purchase some plants so we have something growing and producing during the first part of the harvest season.  That’s a bit depressing since I hear it’s supposed to be easy to grow lettuce and we have failed miserably.  The onions are still looking happy and the raspberries are growing, although some of them appear to have been bitten by frost or something because they have some blossom areas that have turned brown.  As you can see, I’ve been doing a bit of landscaping work, so now the raspberry bed has mulch which will hopefully help keep the weeds under control.  The peanut plant seems content in its pot as you can see on the left.  On the herb front, we put in some German Chamomile which wasn’t too happy with the transplant but seems to be hanging on.  We have at least one lavender plant that has shot a bloom up which is exciting.  The dill is still growing along with some new cilantro seedlings.  We are still waiting on the horseradish (I remain skeptical) and the bay leaf seems happy in its pot.  The rosemary appears to have a little new growth which is encouraging.  The chives don’t seem to be big fans of the cooler weather and have taken to being droopy but I think (fingers crossed) they will perk up soon.  We set out the tomato seedlings and sage seedlings to harden off, so we get to plant those at the frost free date.  I also started the cucumbers (a week late, oops!), zucchini, watermelons, and crenshaw melons in the basement over the weekend.  I managed to kill off a large portion of the herbs in the basement because I couldn’t see how dry they were until it was too late, so it looks like we may be purchasing some herb plants in the near future…sigh…At least we are having some successes, although it will feel a lot more rewarding when we are harvesting more than wild onions from the backyard. 

We also began putting in the arbor over the patio which will have grapes and hops growing on it.  One post is in, three more to go!  I picked up a few grape plants yesterday but still need to find the good eating varieties.  For now we have a white wine variety (the type escapes me) and the blue concord grape plant, which were both from Home Depot.  I ordered the hops online, so those should arrive in the near future.  We really need to get them all in the ground this month.