Saturday in the garden.

I know many of you are still buried under the snow storm.  Maybe a little more about my organic gardening will tide you over until you can get out and dig in your own dirt.

We've had an extremely warm winter this year.  Great for our heating bill, but not so great for the nearby winter olympics in Vancouver BC.  We're all in more or less the same weather area and the shortage of snow up north has kept us from freezing down here.  Anyhow, I've been watching the signs of spring for a few weeks now.  I held off on making any plantings because the calendar kept telling me "not yet Christi, it's just too soon."

Today I finally told that calendar to shut up!  It was a beautiful sunny day and by jove I was going to get in my garden to plant something!

With my seed stash in hand, I headed down to our little enclosed garden and threw open the gate then I got straight to work.  I pulled open the plastic cover on my boat garden and cleared out a few small weeds, cleaned the dead growth off the herbs, pulled out the brown leaves from the strawberries and planted 2 short rows of lettuce.  1 row is "salad bowl" and the second row is a mix of romaine with red and green leaf lettuce. 

The boat garden revealed - garlic, strawberries, fennel, lettuce and carrots

Next I focused my attention on an empty bed that held multi-colored carrots last year.  It is really important to rotate your garden crops to keep down on disease spread, so this year I planted 2 rows of my home grown organic onion sets and 3 intesively planted rows of peas from some seeds that my mom saved for me from her garden last year.

Now I was on a roll!  I still had 2 open beds ready for planting, so I went back through my seed stash and found a few more candidates for an early spring planting.  These beds grew my lushious tomato crops last year, so this year it would need to be something else. 

I decided 1 pea planting just won't be enough for me, especially since last years peas were devoured by our local deer (before we got the deer fence up).  I found a packet of Gray Dwarf peas in the mix.  These are really good.  You can use them as pea pods or as green peas, so I planted 1/2 of this open bed with the gray's, the other half I added 3 short rows of Olympic spinach, 3 short rows of Gormet Mix radishes and 3 plantings of Brussels sprouts.  Yummy! 

It doesn't look like much now, but in a couple

of months this intesive planting will be in full

production!

Feeling good about my progress, I decided to leave the bed unplanted for just a bit longer.  I threw the plastic cover back over the boat garden and called it a day.  Boy it sure was nice to get out there and get something new in the ground.  I'm glad I left the 1 bed empty, so that the next time I get the urge to plant I've got a whole bed ready for me!

Still time to plant your strawberries!

Today I went to check on my secret garden.  My dear friend down the road allows me a few beds in his organic garden to plant as I please.  This year I just took 1 bed for corn.  I planted late, so the corn never fully developed, but according to my motto "nothing to waste", I cut the corn stalks to use for harvest decorations. I cleaned up the corn bed to ready it for my spring planting.  Maybe pumpkins will go in there next year or ???? 

Ben posing with my "miniature" corn

This corn got planted too late to produce

But it sure looks nice as a harvest decoration near my new greenhouse!

After that I turned my attention to my friends strawberry bed.  He has a lot of everbearing berries in there and asked me to thin it out a bit.  The great thing about gardening and friendships is that there's always so much to be shared.  Where there is bounty in 1 garden, there is often need in another, and that was the case with us.

 I thinned out some of his beautiful strawberry plants from his bed, being careful not to over thin or leave any "bald" spots.  Each little berry plant that I pulled out was placed gently in my bucket to be transplanted in my home garden.

What a beautiful and abundant berry patch in the "secret" garden

The grey clouds held on to their rain long enough for me to get home and start my new strawberry bed.  I grabbed my bucket of strawberry starts and got right to work.

It's good to have friends who garden.  These are free starts for my own

strawberry patch.  If  I had purchased these it would have cost a pretty penny.

I chose an empty bed in my garden that receives plenty of sunlight.  Earlier this year this bed had purple cherokee tomatoes.  When planting in my garden from year to year, I try to rotate crops.  This rotation of crops helps to curb transfer of diseases from one season to the next.

This little bed is in direct sunlight most of the summer, a good choice for

everbearing strawberries

Fall is the perfect time to start a new strawberry bed.  When planted at this time of year, the plants have 2 seasons to develop good healthy root systems before the plant puts its energy into fruit. 

One thing to be aware of when you plant your strawberries is the crown.  These plants grow from a base and all new leaves and berries grow out of the crown.  When you transplant your starts be very careful about the depth.  You will want to bury all of the roots, but NOT the crown.  Be sure that the crown of leaves is at or slightly above ground level.  If you do cover the crowns, you will risk the entire plant which can rot below the soil surface.

By next fall I'll be thinning my own strawberry patch and be able

to share some starts with other friends

With a little bit of work and the satisfaction of assisting a friend, I came away with a brand new full bed of strawberries.  These everbearings will set fruit throughout the spring and summer next year.  Even now, some of these little plants still have berries and flowers!