Garden Tour - May 13, 2015

Don't mind all the weeds.  I don't know what's going on in the strawberry patch.  Grass and weeds are making me nuts.  Happily, there are lot of flowers now.

I thought I planted a whole box of properly spaced beet seeds.  Some how I wound up with half a box of badly spaced seedlings.  Go figure...

The peas are about a foot tall now.

This looks unimpressive, right.  Well, these are potato seedlings.  Not just any potato seedlings, but our very own species (probably not the right word) of potatoes.  Through years and years of using seed potatoes, potatoes no longer produce seeds.  But it does happen naturally if you plant different types near each other.  Or something like that.  If you're interested, which you should be, because it's fascinating, go check out Daughter of the Soil, she knows way more about it than I do.

I forgot to start cucumbers, so I just stuck seeds in the ground and hoped for the best.  So far only three out of the ten have sprouted.  Keeping my fingers crossed for more.

I am vaguely certain this is a watermelon seedling, not a cantaloupe...

I still can't get over these onions magically appearing.  They're huge!  They say to wait until the tops fall over and start drying out to harvest them, so I'm waiting.  I also bought another 90 onions because they were GMO free and no clearance.  I'm a sucker for a good deal.

Why are my broccoli seedlings living in a toilet paper tube?  To protect them from cut worms, and so I don't accidentally cut them to the ground while I weed...like I did to the cilantro.  I was crappy about seed starting this year, so a many of my plants are now just seeds in the ground waiting to grow.  Had a put tubes around them, I would be able to identify them from the weeds.  Since I can't, I have been leery of weeding, which isn't good.  I might start some in flats now in case the whole direct sow thing doesn't work out.

My kale has flowers!  My farmer friend from Vermont said there's going to be a kale seed shortage.  I forgot why, but at least now I'll have a huge supply of seeds.  Plus, it looks pretty.

This is the one where the leaves were growing out of the bottom of the stem.  I don't know if you can, or if you'd want to eat these leaves.  Usually when things bolt, they get bletch.  I might try anyway.

My tomato seedlings are usually five times the size of this.  I really started everything so late.  You will notice that this year, instead of just talking about it, we actually laid the soaker hoses down before I planted anything.  It made things a million times easier.

Here's the before shot.  I love looking at the old pics from the beginning of the season and then the end.  The difference is amazing.  The broom corn hasn't sprouted...I'm going to make a broom this year!  I also planted a rhubarb, again, GMO free and on clearance.

 I am pretty sure this artichoke plant won't produce anything this year either.  I really have to remember to start these seeds much earlier.  A friend of a friend is from the area, and successfully grows his artichokes as perennials.  Maybe I can track him down and have him explain his process.

In the meantime, I have mint, mint and more mint.  I recently learned this process of washing the leaves of parsley, rolling them, putting them in a large ziplock, roll the ziplock closed to squeeze out the air and then freezing it.  It works amazingly with parsley, I am going to try it with all my herbs this year. I'll post to link to where I found that as soon as I remember where I saw it...