A Day in the Garden
My mom has nice soil and a nice open sunny area in her back yard with a traditional rowed garden (here’s her garden last summer). She’s been generous enough to increase the garden each year to let me grow sun loving crops in exchange for some seeds, plants and work. On Wednesday I went to my mom’s house and we spent a day getting the garden ready for the season. She covers her garden with a tarp over the winter to protect the soil and to keep the weed seeds out. We uncovered the garden and went to work amending the soil a bit and planting a few early crops.
Traditionally here in Ohio you plant peas and potatoes on St Patrick’s day. It was too cold on that holiday and it’s been pretty wet this spring, so we’ve been waiting for the weather to break to start planting. We spent the entire day getting the garden ready and then planting 8 rows of peas and 4 rows of potatoes and some onions. We follow a more intensive planting system so we plant wider rows of plants instead of single rows with walkways in between. In the walkways we’re planning on adding stepping stones and lower growing plants to make even better use of the space, perhaps beets, chamomile, and other low growing herbs.
We planted peas and potatoes for the freezer and the pantry. I’m hoping for a good pea harvest so I can enjoy lots of peas in our winter stews and a pantry full of potatoes to eat on all winter. What varieties did we plant?
Wando peas: 68 days, produces good yields of 3 ½” long sweet peas. Pods have 6 to 8 dark green peas. A remarkable high quality variety that is resistant to warm weather and drought conditions. The Wando Pea will grow a crop during the driest, hottest summer months, at a time other varieties fail. High in Vitamin A, B, and C. Excellent freezing and canning variety. Vines are 26″ tall.
Kennebec Potatoes: a late maturing white potato variety. An excellent one for fries; chips; baking or hashbrowns.
Yukon Gold Potatoes: A favorite among gardeners, consumers and chefs. Delicious flesh is drier than most other yellow varieties, perfect for baking and mashing. Yellow flesh appears to be buttered. Bred and selected by AgCanada and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food in 1966. Excellent yields and a great keeper. 80-90 days.
What are you planting right now?
Share this:
Oh Deer
There are people that think that deer are majestic beautiful creatures and stop their cars to watch them graze peacefully in the fields. Then there are gardeners who have lost entire crops of peas, blueberries, hostas and tulips to these giant rodents.
Here at Chiot’s Run my biggest garden pest is the white tailed deer. They gnaw off my fruit trees and blueberry bushes. My hydrangeas won’t bloom if I don’t wrap them because the deer find them super tasty. Last year they ate all my peas and every single tulip on the front hillside. Unfortunately we live in a gated community and all the land surrounding the community is owned by our property owners association. Hunting is not allowed on association property, so the deer have a safe haven and we have a herd of 10-12 that beds down about 100 yards behind our house. Of course they love it here because of all the beautiful delicious organic food grown in the gardens here at Chiot’s Run. If I were a deer or groundhog I’d live here too.
Until I can do something about them (like get hunting permission from the people that own the land outside of the association property), I chase them away. Although they’re no longer scared of me. I can go out and talk to them and they just stare at me, you’d think they’d at least thank me for the nice blueberry buds. These were about 40 yards away, I took this picture through my kitchen window. I’ll continue making little forts around everything trying to keep them out, my peas are under a conestoga wagon cover over the hoops in the raised bed their planted in. And I’ll have to live with daffodils instead of tulips and crocuses.
What’s the biggest pest in your garden?
Share this:
Peas and Twigs
Perhaps you have seen peas growing among twigs in garden books, on-line, in other gardens or you do it your own garden. It’s an old tradition to grow peas up twigs. (note: these are not the peas currently in my garden, these photos were taken last spring at the end of April, my peas haven’t even germinated yet).
I’ve always used this method for supporting peas, mainly because it’s convenient and cheap. Since my gardens are surrounded by woods,, I have access to as many saplings and twigs as I need.
I’ve also heard it’s helpful for keeping rabbits and other critters out of the garden. It didn’t work for me last year with the deer, so I’m not sure if this is true.
I read a few weeks ago that peas are traditionally grown up twigs because they are planted at the same time as the trees are pruned. How convenient, you remember when to plant your peas and you have plenty of free supports for them.
Do you have any great old gardening traditions/sayings like this or any cost cutting measures you employ in the garden?
Share this:
The Rewards of Growing Vegetables
The most rewarding part of growing vegetables is harvesting them. It is incredibly satisfying pulling from the ground vegetables you sowed as seed in the spring.
-Christoper Lloyd & Richard Bird (The Cottage Garden)
I’m reading The Cottage Garden book at the moment and I really really like it. I actually got it from the library again, it’s the second time I’ve read it. I decided it’s worthy of being added to my library and I purchased it last week. If you like cottage gardens and like growing vegetables you’ll be delighted by the garden plans and all the information, plant suggestions and photos in this book.
What’s the most rewarding part of growing vegetables for you?
Share this:
The First Tomato Seedling of 2010
Exciting things are happening in the Chiot’s Run basement seed starting headquarters. On Saturday morning while working in the basement, I spotted the first tomato seedling of 2010. Can you guess what kind it is?*
This is when that new macro lens Mr Chiots got me for Christmas comes in handy, I never would have been able to get this close with my other lens. It’s a thing of beauty, since I was working in the basement so I caught it before it even fully emerged from the soil and stood up. I had just checked them that morning and didn’t see anything, later that afternoon there was a tiny speck of green.
I still haven’t started all of my tomato seeds yet, that will happen this week when I can leave the flats on the front porch to warm (it’s supposed to be in the high 60’s). Of course I ended up with more variates than I wanted to grow, but fewer than last year. I’ll give you the full list when I start them.
Do you have any tomatoes growing yet?
*It’s a San Marzano
