Garden News
Harvest began yesterday.
Today it is raining.
The boys helped me in the garden for an hour yesterday morning. The priorities were:
A puzzling part of my garden has been the utter failure of the spring vegetables. The snap peas came up and mostly disappeared. The spinach was dismal. I saw a few sprouts one day, but a few days later there was nothing. The beets were exactly the same as the spinach. But the chard...that was the biggest disappointment.
I love chard. It is the leafy vegetable that keeps producing all through the summer. It keeps well in the refrigerator too, so I was using fresh chard in stir fry until into last November. I planted the chard and it came up pretty well. But yesterday I could only find a few tiny plants.
We'd added hog compost to the garden. I wondered if it was too rich and was burning the plants. When I mentioned the disappearing vegetables to Chuck he pinpointed the problem. He'd seen rabbits in the area where the beets and chard were planted. They eat it off right to the ground.
I had some extra seed for chard (unfortunately not for beets), and some areas in my flower beds where I'd pulled out some flea bane.
Flea bane is a very tall wildflower that produces masses of tiny daisy type flowers with tiny petals so fine it is more like white hair around a yellow center. They produce large quantities of seed, which germinates readily, so if you aren't careful, a little flea bane this year will translate into a garden overrun with it next year. So I pulled all of it out. Enough seed was spread that I'm not worried about whether there will be any next year.
But I digress. There is space in my flower beds. I heard the rain begin and decided I did not want to wait for drier soil, so I went out in my pj's with my seeds and a hoe and got the chard planted in three of the flower beds. I so hope it grows. It is a pretty vegetable so I don't think it will be out of place with the flowers.
Today it is raining.
The boys helped me in the garden for an hour yesterday morning. The priorities were:
- finish mulching the vining crops that are susceptible to squash beetles and get the row covers in place
- finish mulching the tomatoes and get the cages put up
- pull the weeds in the corn (it is too wet to hoe)
A puzzling part of my garden has been the utter failure of the spring vegetables. The snap peas came up and mostly disappeared. The spinach was dismal. I saw a few sprouts one day, but a few days later there was nothing. The beets were exactly the same as the spinach. But the chard...that was the biggest disappointment.
I love chard. It is the leafy vegetable that keeps producing all through the summer. It keeps well in the refrigerator too, so I was using fresh chard in stir fry until into last November. I planted the chard and it came up pretty well. But yesterday I could only find a few tiny plants.
We'd added hog compost to the garden. I wondered if it was too rich and was burning the plants. When I mentioned the disappearing vegetables to Chuck he pinpointed the problem. He'd seen rabbits in the area where the beets and chard were planted. They eat it off right to the ground.
I had some extra seed for chard (unfortunately not for beets), and some areas in my flower beds where I'd pulled out some flea bane.
Flea bane is a very tall wildflower that produces masses of tiny daisy type flowers with tiny petals so fine it is more like white hair around a yellow center. They produce large quantities of seed, which germinates readily, so if you aren't careful, a little flea bane this year will translate into a garden overrun with it next year. So I pulled all of it out. Enough seed was spread that I'm not worried about whether there will be any next year.
But I digress. There is space in my flower beds. I heard the rain begin and decided I did not want to wait for drier soil, so I went out in my pj's with my seeds and a hoe and got the chard planted in three of the flower beds. I so hope it grows. It is a pretty vegetable so I don't think it will be out of place with the flowers.
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