Night time visitors

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You come out in the morning and do some poking around the garden. Looking more closely at things, you notice these small little holes in your soil. Many gardeners know what this is but for the new gardener, this is very good news. You have earthworms visiting you at night. They are helping to turn your soil, aerate, and fertilize. They are very good visitors to have. Occasionally you might visit your garden with a flashlight and notice something move very quickly out of the corner of your eye. You look, and it’s gone. But you’ll see the hole they went into, and you’ll then realize what it was. Fun stuff going on all the time.

My square foot garden coming out of winter

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It’s about time to start planting some things directly into the garden now. This is a picture of what mine looks like under cover. The empty spaces have been the latest things that I’ve been having for lunches and salads, and even a few things for breakfast(baby arugula in scrambled eggs?) Some have been replanted, and some I’ll hold off on to put transplants in the next several days. I’ve still got a lot of good eating under there. Claytonia, spinach, cilantro, onions, carrots, lettuce, tokyo bekana,  bok choi, and some green onions.

Today I direct seeded kale, more spinach, french breakfast radish, and some turnips. With the exception of kale, these will be up quickly and harvested long before the summer garden gets here. 

Herbs-parsley

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Its early but I’m putting out some of my parsley in grow bags. For those who have never used them, you might give them a try. They are made out of a soft fabric and will last for years. I now grow most of my herbs in these because I need the room in the regular garden for other crops.

The great thing(s) about these is they come in all sorts of sizes. This is a 5 gallon grow bag and thats all I need for my herbs. You can pick them up and move them around because they have handles, which is an advantage over the Smart Pot grow bags. You get healthy air-pruned plants that are easily contained. My favorites are from 247 Gardenmate. You can find them here. Mine are 5 years old and show no signs of wearing out.

Square foot garden-arugula

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I was never a fan of arugula. Too spicy, to peppery for my taste. What I learned was that if you harvest it when smaller, grow it in cooler weather, and experiment with different varieties, you’ll find it looses much of the spicy edge. This particular variety is Astro, and it is milder when grown this way.

 

This was direct seeded about 12 days ago on a very wintery day. As you would expect, this would come up faster on a slightly warmer day, but I like to see how far I can push the limits in our 4 season climate.

Winterized square foot gardens

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You cant tell what’s under there now but you’ll see it when winter gets here. I have 2 or 3 empty squares left to plant for the winter garden, which will be radishes and corn salad at this point. We’ve had 2 hard freezes, and that’s made the carrots very sugar-like. My brother was visiting from California-I gave him one to taste. His comment: “I don’t remember ever tasting a carrot like this.” Thats what the winter garden is all about. Starches turning to sugar in a protective manner, kind of like the plants antifreeze system.

 

There’s not really a lot of new things in this years winter garden. The one new item I’m really looking forward to harvesting is parsnips. That, along with turnips, will make an excellent soup. Snow coming this weekend!