Potatoes and Leeks and More!

Finally today, I got around to planting the potatoes and leeks that arrived last week. I put the potatoes in the back of the first garden plot, took about a row and a half. The next couple of rows I filled in the with the leeks. I had no idea I ordered so many, they took up more room than I expected. I gave them a good watering and I will see how they are doing in a couple of days/weeks. I guess I am supposed to give them some fertilizer in about 3 weeks.

Still to come:

Lemon grass

chives

spearmint

basil

peppers

tomatoes

spicy peppers

cilantro

I expect most of those won't arrive until mid-May when the threat of frost is really gone. Now I just need to draw a diagram of the garden plot so I don't forget where I planted the potatoes and put more stuff in on top of them!

And a note to self - it does not appear that the leeks came from White Flower Farm since they were shipped from Texas so next year might want to find a closer source.

I figured I'd break these up according to when I planted them.

Last Wednesday 4/14 I planted a couple of things that my mom gave me from her yard. A couple of plants of Kale and some little flowers... and I can't remember the names of them!

The kale looked a little yellowish at first but we got a good rain last week and right before it started raining I dumped two bags of top soil and two bags of garden soil into the garden and mixed it around a bit. The dirt is feeling better. This past weekend I added two more bags of topsoil so hopefully that will be sufficient for the first garden plot (closest to the house). No signs of yellow on the kale anymore, I think it should be fine. Looks very hardy.

This past weekend 4/18 I planted some pansies out front and some black-eyed susan's on the side of the house facing west. Hopefully the soil is okay over there. They look kind of miserable right now but my mom says they are hardy.

I haven't forgotten about this, just been busy planting! Here's what I've done so far:

Strawberries - 4/10 - planted three plants in the front yard. Looks like I lost one of them already but my mom promises she has more for me.

Blueberry bushes 4/10 - planted three bushes in the front yard. There doesn't seem to be any noticeable growth yet but they certainly don't look dead either. I put some peat moss in the hole when I buried them and then just added a little more around the bushes today.

Raspberry bushes - 4/10 - Not sure if I screwed up my order or the company I ordered from did but I thought I was only getting four bushes and ended up with 12! I planted four of the bushes out front interspersed with the blueberry bushes and the strawberry plants. Three of them went over on the side of the house (next to the house where nobody lives). The rest were just kind of stuck in random spots around the perimeter of the yard. A couple in the very back and a couple on the other side of the house. My mother tells me that they are not very attractive bushes and we might need to transplant them from the front of the house, but I am going to wait for now and see how they do. I hate to transplant them already.

Dawn & Dusk Clematis Rose collection - 4/10 - so far not as fancy as it sounds. I soaked the rose for a couple of hours before I planted it and put the clematis about a foot away. I wasn't sure if the clematis was going to make it at first, but so far so good. After I get most of the garden planted I'm going to put up the arch that I used for my wedding for the rose bush to climb and then the clematis can climb the rose bush. So far no signs of budding on the rose bush.

Asparagus - 4/10 - Boy was that 25 ft. trench a pain to dig out. We finally got it all dug out and the asparagus planted. I think it was the last project of the day and we were tired but we got them all in and they are just starting to poke up. I think this weekend I will buy a couple of bags of good dirt and fill in the rest of the trench. We also cut down a tree over the weekend that was casting a lot of shade. It wasn't in very good shape and it has opened up our yard a lot.

I have to give props to all of the plants due to the fact that they arrived while I was on vacation and sat in my brother-in-law's garage for nearly a week before I was able to plant them. All of them seemed to have survived just fine with the exception of the one strawberry plant which isn't bad at all.

Springtime

It's a gray chilly day here in CT, but the green bits are just starting to poke out of the ground and I'm sitting in front of beautiful yellow forsythia flowers that I forced inside. This time of year is all about the dreams of the flowers and yummy vegetables to come.

We moved into our new house last September right before we got married and have had little time to enjoy the outdoor aspects of our new house. Last fall I planted a few bulbs in the "landscaped" parts of the yard, but really will have to start a garden from scratch if I want to grow vegetables and fruits. This is intended to be a record of my experiments in the garden. I have little experience except in containers and indoors so we'll see how well I do. I still have high hopes!

I have also signed us up for a CSA, something that I've been wanting to do for awhile but which are surprisingly hard to find around here. I have to drive a little ways to get my box and I'm not sure how it is going to work with us going away on weekends, but we will find out. And maybe it will inspire me to try new vegetables and experiment with new recipes which I love to do.

I probably wouldn't bother with this if there were more information out there about CT and the local food scene, but I haven't found much of interest especially in my neck of the woods. Plus at the very least next year when I start my garden again I will have a nice record here of what worked and what didn't.