Thursday, April 30, 2020

COVID-19 Quarantine Day 49 - Garden Bed 2

Hello again!  I thought I would have been working on this blog a little earlier in the day, but things came up and people needed extra help and I've just barely had a moment to myself to sit down and write.  I didn't eat breakfast at all this morning, didn't get lunch lunch a little before 1pm, then I was scarfing it down to lead a call with a student at 1, our meeting went about 15 minutes long because he needed extra help, so I finished my lunch around 1:45, then went back to working with the kids on their lessons (which is what I was doing from 11, when I got done with my morning work and zoom calls, to 12:30, when I started working on the kids', Michael's, and my lunches).  It's been quite a day!  But now I'm free(ish) until about 6:30.  Then we have Lifegroup starting at 7:30, and Avery has a Facebook Live Video at 8.  Are you tired yet?  Thursday is our busy day here at home.  It's no wonder I like for the kids to get all of their work done before Friday so we can have an extra day off!  Phew!  I'm tired just recounting the day!  Alright, onto a recap of the garden boxes!!

Bed 1 - I failed to mention this in the last blog, which was about Bed 1, so I'll do it here.  Bed 1 was my original box and first attempt at a raised bed.  It was built in the Spring of 2018.  It did shockingly well, even in the first year I had it.  Much better that the clay soil had ever done.  It made me think that maybe I really could garden and maybe the problem had been my soil all along and not me.  It inspired and excited me and made me want another box the following year to plant even more plants.  Which brings us to....

Bed 2 - This bed was built in the Spring of 2019.  We also had a load of dirt brought in and rented a skidsteer (Which reminds me, Mama and Daddy, I need to pay you for the skidsteer rental this year!  What do I owe you?) to move the dirt from the front to the back.  We topped off Bed 1, because over the course of the previous year it had settled quite a bit.  Then we build and filled Bed 2.  And, of course, by we, I mean Michael and Daddy with the kids' "help".  My job came later with the mulch and planting.  2019 went just as well, if not better, than 2018 had!  I had more plants and more space and worked hard to fill every square into!  I learned about garden insects and pests.  I got a little more produce than I had the year before and, again, I was filled with hope and excitement about my garden.  I knew the next time we built a box, we would finish the whole garden.  It just didn't make sense to pay a dirt delivery fee and for a skidsteer rental every year and drag the whole thing out.  So very shortly after Bed 2 was build, I came up with a plan about how I wanted the rest of the garden to look.  You've seen most of how it's turned out now.  😁  There are still a couple things I'm thinking about changing/adding, but I've spent more than enough money this year, so those big ideas will have to wait.  😉  But, this history lesson is probably not the reason you got on here today.  Let's see the pictures!!!
Unfortunately for you, there's not much to see here in Bed 2 at the moment, but hopefully there will be soon.  Here's what you're looking at, from the front of the box, moving to the back fence:
Those 5 trenches you see are asparagus trenches.  Under the soil there are asparagus crowns, or root systems.  Asparagus is, by far, my favorite summer vegetable to grill!  I have 5 trenches in this box and 2 trenches in Bed 1.  This year I won't get any asparagus.  I have to just let them grow and go to seed.  Next year I'm allowed to harvest for 2 weeks only, and then let them grow and go to see again for the rest of the season.  Each year after that I'm allowed to harvest for 2 more weeks per year until I get to 6 weeks, which is the suggested, max harvest time per year.  We'll see how they do and then I'll decide how strictly I'll stick to those rules.  😉
Behind the asparagus trenches are three 1x1 plots with seeds planted.  Honestly, at the moment, without going out there or looking at my garden app, I don't even know what's planted out there.  I think there are herbs and marigolds.  I could be wrong.  There are a couple little sprouts coming up over there.  I'm resisting the urge to pull everything up.  I think some of what I'm seeing is weeds, but I'm not entirely sure, so I'm trying to leave them alone.  What I'm learning here is that if I don't know what something looks like when it's coming up, I need to start the seeds indoors, otherwise I could end up pulling the seedlings from the garden, thinking they're weeds.  Whoops!
Beyond the seeds there are three more 1x1 plots.  On the left is more seeds of some sort, in the center is the cage Michael built for my pea seedlings to be planted around, and on the left will be pepper seedlings.  I actually planted all of my pea and pepper seedlings yesterday, so hopefully they're settling in nicely.  I wanted to go ahead and get this blog written before I went out to check on things.  Here are a few pics from last night after they were planted.  I can't remember if I post pics of them last night or not.
Pea seedlings, had to kind of wind them through the cage a bit to encourage them to grow that direction.  You can only really see two of the three seedlings in this picture.  On the left is my oldest seedling.  The one in the front was planted a week or two after the first one and I tracked it as it grew an inch or two a day for a while.  It was crazy!  The third one is in the back.  It had barely popped out of the soil, but as it had spent all of it's grow time outdoors in a little pot upstairs on the deck, I thought it would be ok to go into the garden, even though it wasn't very big yet.  All 3 of my pea plants stayed in their biodegradable pots when they were planted into the garden.  I also poured my stinky fish fertilizer in each hole that the pots were planted in to give them an extra boost as they got settled in the garden.  I use this fish fertilizer on my plants every 3 weeks over the summer.  It seems to work really well!  I can't remember if I started using it last summer or two years ago, but my plants sure seem to love it.  Between the fertilizer and the nice soil my gardens have done so so well!  And each year I'm learning more to make them better!  Just wait until I tell you about nematodes!!!  Oh yeah!  Fun stuff!!  Back to Bed 2, focus, Jen...

Next to the pea seedlings I planted some pepper seedlings that I started inside.  Like the peas, they were planted in their biodegradable pots in a hole filled with fish fertilizer.  They aren't too big yet, but they've been outside and handling the weather well for several days, so I didn't see any reason not to stick them in the ground.  I have banana pepper seedlings as well as some multicolored bell pepper seedlings.  These all came from old seeds that I originally bought from Dollar Tree for 25 cents a package.  So I planted them thinking, well, what's the worst that can happen?  They don't come up and I've wasted a couple weeks waiting on them.  But hey, maybe they do come up and my 25 cents seeds get me way more than I bargained for!  Well, they came up!  We'll see how they do!  Fingers crossed!
Our last plants in Bed 2 are Avery's carrots.  We started planting carrots in the middle of February.  We waited 3 weeks between the planting of each row of carrots.  She has 4 rows planted right now.  As you can see in row 2, we planted a little extra.  That's because row 1 hadn't popped up yet and I was worried we weren't going to get anything.  We evened things out again by row 3.  Row 4 is just starting to sprout (they were planted on April 13th).  We'll see how well we spaced them as they continue to come up.  If the carrots go well and Avery wants to try them again next year, I might try using the seed tape next year.  This is our first year with a lot of new plants, so we'll see how things go, learn, and adjust for next year.  😊

So that's all I've got for this blog!  Thanks for reading and for understanding that even though we're stuck at home, life is kind of crazy still, lol!  I'm not sure how much more I'll post tonight, but I'll try to get some more in.  I have quite a queue of blogs I need to get to... Beds 3-5, Recent recipes, Connor's Birthday Surprise, a few pictures of the kids' recent schoolwork, stuff like that.  I'll get there eventually.  😉  But for now, the sun has moved enough that my feet are in the sun and heating up.  I could take them down off the footstool out here on the deck, and enjoy sitting for a while longer, or I could go check on my garden, which is fully shaded at this point in the day.  *facepalm*  So I think I'll head over there.  😊  More again later!  Love you and take care!


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