Garden Journal

April 4, 2024

Today was another gorgeous day in the garden.

We started by removing an old cracked concrete wall, and prepping to replace it with a brick wall. We dug a trench for the new wall and added guard walls to be ready to lay a base layer of concrete for next week

The carrot bed needed de-weeding, but otherwise the carrots are looking great. We harvested 1 and they are now about 6” long 1.5” wide. We will leave them for a few more weeks before harvesting

The strawberry plants have started returning copious amounts of strawberries, which we enjoyed snacking on after working.

The onion and garlic plants appear to be doing well

The pea and lettuce bed has not been doing too well. The pea area was largely taken over by weeds so we cleared those out and replanted some peppers there. The lettuce plants are doing nicely though. In the front right beds we turned the soil and planted corn about 2 feet apart from each other in a checkered pattern. In the front right beds we intend to use the “Three Sisters Method” to grow squash, beans, and corn. So after a few weeks of corn growth, we will plant beans and squash around the stalks.

The Tomato plants (and the one beat in the middle) needed to be thinned and separated out. They look a little sad after the transplanting but we expect them to get huge over the next few weeks so the extra spacing will be crucial

March 16, 2024

Today was a beautiful cool sunny day. 

The Yard: Due to the weather we hadn’t tended the garden for the past 2 weeks and with all the rain the yard was completely overgrown. We started by moing paths and clearing out the areas between the beds to move around easier and to prevent weeds from spreading into the beds. As the day warmed the flowers in the tall grass opened up and the whole meadow area was filled with bees. We decided to leave the remaining meadow area to attract pollinators and because we didn’t have the heart to cut down the rest of it.

Misc bed: We moved and separated out the corn stalks that had started growing out of the bed we had put the mulch in.The front of the bed is low on soil. We cleared a fair bit of the bed out and assuming we get some more dirt, it will be ready for planting next gardening session.

The Strawberry beds and boxes: We de-weeded the strawberry planters and pruned some of the strawberry sprouts. The plants appear to be doing really well. Most are flowering and producing copious amounts of berries. It is still early but about 10 were ready to be harvested which we ate during the later planning meeting. 

The Carrot Bed: The carrots appear to have sprung back from their traumatic replanting last month. Based on how they looked back in February I was concerned that they were all gonners, but the bed looked healthy and I am hoping we will be able to get a good harvest of them soon. This bed will need some de-weeding next time.

The Onion and Potato Bed: Deweeded this bed. The plants here are looking super healthy!

The Beans and Spinach Bed (and now lettuce): The spinach appeared to have largely been eaten by a pest and the beans didn’t appear to be doing well either. This bed may be under fertilized. We are going to mix in more compost next time. We went ahead and turned over the other half of the bed and planted the young lettuce plants from the green house there. 

Future Plans:

• Saturday March 23rd: We plan to lay brick to frame the outside area of the garden.

• Saturday March 30th: We plan to plant flowers

• Saturday April 6th: We plan to have the soil we need. This will be our big day of moving everything out of the greenhouse: planting the tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, etc.