The Garden has No Clothes

I wanted to get the garden completely clothed in green before I made a blog post about it. I wanted to show before and after pictures and maybe even try to give some tips like the master gardeners. But I guess I am big enough that my wants won’t hurt me! My memory did not serve me well as I forgot to take the “before” pictures...and master gardener, I am not! I will offer a few tips as the growing season gets in gear (most of the useful tidbits of information I can share have to do with veggies that need to be planted later). I thought that I tell you more about the garden, since that is what has been eating my time like a moth on a wool sock!

On Monday, we planted peas. If you know me even slightly, you will know that I HATE regular old green peas. So I planted ones that I would eat…novel idea, huh? Not so sure about the wife and kids, but I think that I can coax them into at least trying them. We planted snow peas, which are great in salads and stir-fry, and sugar snap peas, which are edible pod peas…that means they are more like green beans than peas. I did not think that the pack of seeds I had would go so far! We ended up with 4 rows of snow peas and 2 rows of snap peas. After they are 3-5 inches high, we will go back and mulch and stake them so they can go nuts climbing up a trellis. Since we didn’t get started early enough in the evening (can you say dog-tired due to the time change?), we ran out of daylight.

Rows of peas after Daniel watered them on day 2

So Tuesday after work and before milking and Bible study, the kids and I planted 18 broccoli plants and half a gazillion onion plants. I got these onion “plants” instead of sets or seed because it is so hard to find sweet onion sets/seed locally. They come in a bundle and the label says 60 plants each…yeah, right! That’s why I bought 2 bundles—one bundle of reds and a bundle of whites. Turns out, the bundle has probably 100 plants! Now I have to make more room for these onions because you know I just can’t let a good onion go to waste! I guess the garden layout will now have a little re-design…maybe I should call Extreme Makeover: Garden Edition! Oh well, you can really never go wrong with onions, I always say. Here is Katie and me planting the red onions. Photo credits for today’s post go to Daniel.

This evening, we will be planting the rest of the plants (including the last bundle of onions). Cabbage, Romaine, Buttercrunch and Red Sails lettuce, and Bok Choy are all on deck. And if we can get to it before we exchange Purim gifts and watch One Night with the King (a movie about the life of Esther), we are going to sow some other varieties of lettuce in the grow boxes. Here is a close-up picture of one of the grow boxes.

Wishing you and yours a Happy Purim!