June 2010 Garden Tour

Camary and I did a video tour of our garden almost a month ago. We had snow and freezing temperatures clear through May, so I'll post an update of all that fun later. On to the show!

Spring has sprung

The weather has been nice for the last few weeks, with one exception.  The week of Spring Break was cold and stormy, with several inches of snow falling.  Luckily, we were in southern Nevada that week.  Unfortunately, I had put my broccoli out in the garden the week before without hardening it off properly and I lost all but three plants.  I'll have to see how they come back from that experience.

We also planted peas, carrots, chard, lettuce and radishes the week before the snow and transplanted the onions outside.  The peas are just starting to emerge.  The onions look like they haven't been watered enough, because they haven't.  My boxes seem overrun with weeds already, so I'll have to tackle that as well.

We've been following the planting schedule, so we have peppers, tomatoes and pumpkins going, and just got summer squash in the pots yesterday.  I also decided to try some herbs again.  I tried those years ago and didn't even get anything to germinate.  I had more success this time, with parsley, sage, cilantro, mint, basil and thyme.  Sorry, no rosemary.



I also potted up my Anaheim pepper that I planted awhile ago, and have been hardening off my second set of broccoli.  And the boys and I moved some fencing yesterday in an effort to give the chickens some room to roam all the way around the garden.  I hope to finish that project this week. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the last frost!  Happy gardening!

The First Seeds Have Been Planted

I'm in trouble. It's not even March and I'm already behind on the blog. Not a good sign. Three weeks ago Camary and I planted some broccoli seed. Those plants are now getting their second true leaves. Last week we planted some more broccoli, as well as some onions and some peppers - jalapenos and anaheims to be more precise. It's still early to be starting peppers, but I plan on potting these few up, so I can bring them back into the house next fall and have fresh peppers through the winter. I'm hooked on salsa, so I need a steady supply. Here's a link to the planting schedule I posted last year.

And finally, a picture of my new batch of chickens.  Grasshoppers beware!

Thinking about gardening yet?

Well, last year certainly was a bummer. But I'm looking forward to a better year in the garden. I plan to move the fence around the garden so that the chickens can roam around all four sides and keep the grasshoppers under control. Unfortunately, some red tailed hawks have found our little flock and decided it's an easy source of food. Hopefully our chickens will actually be able to roam later this summer. But that's another story.

It's time to order seeds for this year's garden. I got a catalog from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (rareseeds.com) and they have Anaheim peppers, which neither Seed Savers Exchange (seedsavers.org) nor High Mowing Seeds (highmowingseeds.com) carry, unless they're under some name I'm not familiar with. Anaheims make a great salsa. It looks as though Baker Creek's prices are a little better than the others, and they're closer (California), so I'm going to order as much as I can from them. SSE and HMS are both excellent, so I will continue to buy certain seeds from them that I can't find elsewhere.

So, I'm plotting out where I'm going to plant what, determining what seed I have left over from last year, and getting ready to order for this year. Happy gardening!