All posts by kerry

April Showers bring HAIL?

The past month hasn’t seen much activity in the garden.  April, true to its history has been wet, wet, wet.  A surprise hail storm lasted long enough to see a rather large pile of hail exit the roof and establish itself in front of our porch.  Its remnants were still there the next morning when I left for work.  Fortunately, the hail was small and didn’t seem to do any damage either to the balcony lettuce or to the spinach seedlings just coming up at the community garden spot.  I’m sure the lettuce was wondering what was going on.

This Just In

Today saw the planting of two varieties of potato, Makah Ozette and Nicola. The latter is a European variety of a lower glycemic potato. I’ve only found ONCE source in the US so far, the Main Potato Lady.  Once again I opted for planting in half buried large nursery pots, 6 in all. I learned about this method from a community gardener in the UK.  Also into the ground went some beet (Cylindrical) and radish (French Breakfast) seed.  Yeah its wet but there wasn’t a lot of disturbing the soil except where the potato pots were ‘planted’.  I think they are happy.

Whats Growing

Broccoli and Chard:

4 starts of each went in the ground near the end of last month.  I wasn’t planning on planting chard but they are so pretty and I was so needing to plant SOMETHING.

Garlic:

Last years two garlic plantings are coming along nicely.  Looks like I have near 100% of what I planted up and ready to start the season.  I gave them a bit of fertilizer last month and with all this rain they should be getting the full benefit.  Bring on the sun.

Kale:

Another overwintered crop.  I planted these from starts late last summer.  We’ve been eating on them for about a month now.  They have started to go to seed but the dog will eat the unopened flower tops so life is good.

Leeks:

The last of the overwintering trio.  A fellow gardener offered up some tiny leek starts last spring.  They ended up getting overshadowed last summer and stayed pretty small.  They come back with a vengeance this year and are almost ready to harvest.

Lettuce:

The old lettuce seed I planted last month did nothing.  Not surprising.  I think the seed was circa 2014.  I picked up some starts from a local garden center and tucked a few starts of the old Amish variety in next to the onions and a few other from a mixed lot into the balcony planter.   I decided to bite the bullet and buy some fresh seed and start those in a plastic container inside.  They are about half ana inch tall now and will be tucked out here and there once things get more settled.

Peas:

My nearly vegetarian dog LOVES snow peas.  We do too but she ends up eating most of them.  I planted half as much as I did last year, a single cardboard trough worth.  The idea was to get them up indoors, grow them out on the balcony to about six inches then plant out.  The scheduled roof redo meant they went into the garden early.  So far so good.

Spinach:

The two varieties of spinach are coming along nicely.  Spinach bolts when the days get to be a certain length so the season tends to be short here as we get long pretty early.  Its a pity, the climate could make for some awesome spinach almost year round.

Is It Spring Yet?

Spring seems to take forever in the Pacific Northwest.  Just when I think it is time to plant or give the overwintered this or that some much needed outdoor exposure, the temps drop.  I try to keep an eye on the weather but we often do not follow the foretasted temps very closely.  The lemon grass went out yesterday as the weather app said the low would be about 5-8 degrees warmer than it actually was.  I’m really hoping I didn’t lose it to the cold.

This weekend saw the first ‘real’ day of gardening for the year.  Spring just around the corner and while I did plant some garlic in Jan (very late),  that didn’t involve more than poking my finger in the ground to make a hole and popping the fattest cloves in before covering with soil and so can’t REALLY be counted as a Spring planting..  Yesterday saw the addition of some peet moss to the fairly sandy soil of my newish garden spot.  It does feel good to get the fork into the soil and turn it over to see some earthworms.  There has to be some organic matter in there to support them right?

After the turning over and addition of some organic fertilizer, I seeded a couple of small beds.  Spring plantings are my favorite.  After a long dark winter nothing feeds the soul like the first planting of Spring.  Yesterday saw two favorites go into the ground.  Spinach (Giant Winter and Olympia Hybrid) and Lettuce (Gourmet Blend and Oak Leaf Blend).  The seed was a couple of years old in both instances so I seeded thickly.  If I can get 20% germination out of them I’ll have more than we need for the allotted space.   If not, there will be time to try again with the lettuce.  The spinach maybe not though.  The days get long quickly this time of year and once Spinach starts seeing days very long it will bolt regardless of the temps.