Springtime is here and we have our garden planted. Taking forward our success from last year we used starts from a local nursery rather than seeding in the greenhouse (maybe next year). We had learned a few things from our mistakes and reduced a few plantings as well as reconfiguring the garden to take plant height and spacing into better account.
Some of Last years crops:
We kept with the same type of vegetables:
- Lettuce, Kale, Swiss Chard, and Cabbage
- Tomatoes (Roma, Cherry, and Slicing) – reduced the number and also added a few to pots outside of the garden.
- Tomatillos – reduced from four to only two plants
- Corn, Beans, Snap Peas, and Sunflowers – we built some side raised beds to put these against the deer fence to give more room.
- Herbs – the herb bed survived the winter and we just added some Cilantro and more Thyme plants.
- Broccoli – once harvested we will add more cabbage.
- Brussel sprouts – our plants did well last year – but by the time we could harvest there was some sort of fungus on them, so we didn’t feel good about eating these.
- Artichoke – these two plants came back and are looking good.
- Carrots, Celery, Radish, Onion, Garlic – typical garden fare
- Squash – we didn’t do much last year so added some acorn squash, cucumber, and ONE zucchini vine. It’s possible those might end up crowding out the bed.
As for the garden itself – we didn’t need to do anything with the existing beds other than weed – but replaced some of the deer netting. We added a wash sink table combination for quick cleanup of harvested vegetables. Lastly, we added a bird bath with some gravel for bee water, last year we had noticed quite a few bees drinking from the edge of the beds where the water would pool up.
Currently, we are using a sprinkler on a timer like we did last year – but will likely consider putting in a drip system to save water and keep the moisture off the top of the plants that might prevent some of the fungi we saw late last summer on our Brussel Sprouts.