So I took the Springtime off......

I can't believe how little happened in my garden while I wasn't there to lovingly care and tend for it, (when I was working all day in an office, away from my family, my home, the soil and the sun and the plants).  Now that I've resigned from my job, I'm going gangbusters on the yard and on the garden.  While I was working, I decided to scale back how much I planted to compensate for my lack of time, so this Spring I had some lettuce, a couple of radishes (the others just didn't get picked) and some broccoli this Spring.  And, we just recently harvested a ton of carrots!  Love those things!  So easy to grow from seed, homegrown carrots taste completely different from store-bought carrots, and tomatoes love them (supposedly)!  Now, the garden's growing tomatoes (trying fewer plants on trellises this year without espadrilling them.....I laid them down in the dirt because I read that roots will grow all along the hairy stem and you get more fruiting branches that way), yellow squash, nasturtiums, zucchini, zinnias, a sweet pepper and some purple crowder peas that I saved from last year's crop.  I've also planted a couple of containers of lettuces and radishes (supposed to keep the lettuce from tasting bitter from the heat), and a muscadine grapevine.  She likes the wild boy muscadine that's growing in the brush behind our yard, and we've got a nice little crop of baby grapes coming along!  My zucchini blossoms keep dropping--I vaguely recall having this problem before, and I think I need a second zucchini plant to fix this problem.  Still waiting for my first squash to get big enough to be more than two bites before I pick them, but the four of them are happily taking over an entire bed.  I let my first blue lake beans dry on the vine while I was in DC, and last week I popped the beans inside into the ground, and this week I've got new plants starting to poke through the dirt.  I also have a red onion growing that had sprouted in the cabinet....who needs a seed packet when you can grow what's in your kitchen?

As for the yard, we had some landscapers come in and clear out all that old monkeygrass, which has left me a blank slate to work with (in the backyard--Craig wants to get a landscape design done for the front yard).  So, while Meghan and Michael are at camp this week, Matthew's attending Mommy's Art Camp--the medium is plants.  What's the cheapest way to buy plants?  In a hanging basket!  You can get them basically at "buy two get one free" this way.  What you can't find in a basket, go find at Hillbilly Produce.  They're having a buy one get one free sale.  I save my plant containers, and I spent the afternoon planting new containers for the deck and the yard using combinations of all these plants.  What fun!  I hope this Miracle-Gro Moisture Control potting soil is all they say it is.  Time will tell.

The garden's growing!

Matthew and I spent a couple of hours outside yesterday, thinning out our turnips in bed #3. We've got carrots starting to sprout in bed #4, and they'll need thinning soon. The beets are starting to sprout, I'll wait until they're the size of microgreens before I thin those.....those leaves are too yummy to waste! The radishes have sprouted in between the lettuces in bed #5, and so has the kale. Don't see how those tiny kale sprouts will ever turn into something huge. Ever doubt God's power? Take a look at a kale seed, and watch what happens to it with just a little dirt, water and sunshine.

What's planted now....

Never know what you're gonna find....

While I was turning up the soil to plant some peas this afternoon, I discovered that Meghan's carrots had actually grown. We've tried to grow carrots before, with great success in growing the green part, but not much success in producing edible roots worth mentioning. Maybe it's the depth at which we plant the seeds. Maybe it's what we plant them with. Maybe it's the seeds we plant. Regardless, the carrot seeds Meghan planted near our tomatoes last summer have produced a crop--of three carrots. Thankfully, just enough for each kid to have one, and for Mom and Dad to steal a bite. I'm sure that bite will be worth the 2 seconds I spent handing the seeds to Meghan to plant.

Speaking of carrots, I planted some more, in the exact same spot in bed #4 today. I also planted peas on our old tomato trellises, turnips, onions and rutabagas. These were all planted in the same bed, and are companion plants. Peas and carrots are mutually beneficial, and are the perfect planting partners. Turnips like to grow near peas, and rutabagas like to grow near turnips. Please notice, I did NOT plant any onions in this bed--peas and onions do not mix.

To finish out bed #5, Craig cut down our fall broccoli plants to see if we can get some more broccoli out of them--after the first cutting, broccoli plants no longer produce heads, but they will produce more florets. Since we've been eating broccoli florets since Christmas, I don't know if we'll get any more off of these plants. It's simple to replace the plants if the experiment doesn't work. I interplanted the broccoli plants with beet seeds and more turnips, and with almost all of the onions. I have just a few more onion sets to put in with the strawberry patches. My Spring garden is almost completely planted. Just a few more seeds, and we'll be set.

It's Planting Time Again!

You can start planting some of your favorite Spring vegetables on February 1 in our region. While I had the best intentions, and was at Renfrow's on 2/1 with my garden plan in hand, the plants and seeds I bought didn't actually get into the dirt until yesterday, the 7th.


Here's my plan for bed #5 this Spring. This bed gets the most shade once the trees in my yard leaf out, so I've designated it my main Spring bed. Yesterday, I planted lettuce plants, swiss chard plants and spinach plants with Early Scarlet Globe radish seeds and Sweet Georgia onion sets planted in-between. I also planted Dwarf Blue Curled, Vate's Strain kale seeds with Detroit Dark Red, Morse's Strain beet seeds in-between. Each box on my plan represents 1 square foot. I've planted companion plants together (i.e. radishes and lettuce), and I've chosen only plants that grow well together, such as onions and beets for this bed.


I'm not planting as many items in this bed this year since I found I had more lettuce last year than we could eat. Each head of lettuce will generate more leaves whenever you harvest some for a salad, reducing the number of heads you need to plant. That lesson learned saved me a considerable amount of money at Renfrow's this year! If you're thinking of planting a garden, then take a trip to Renfrow's. They have posters showing (by season) whether you should buy plants or seeds for each vegetable, they can give you the NC State Cooperative Extension chart listing planting dates for each vegetable, and if you don't want to think too hard about it all, they can pick out the plants you'll need to plant right now. Tell them I (the lady with all the kids and the red-headed husband) sent you!