The beds are filled. The trellises are up. The soil is in. So are the seeds! Now, we wait.
There’s more to it than that, but if you’re just checking in to see what’s up, that’s the tl;dr version.
As I’ve mentioned, from Fall 2018 to Spring 2019, we’ve doubled our raised bed space, and added roughly 180 feet of vertical space in the form of trellises. My excitement is tempered with a healthy dose of “hoo boy, hope we’re ready!”, considering just two years ago we had a mere 3’x6′ raised bed. Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that jazz.
Last weekend, we got a delivery from our local nursery of (10) 3.5 cubic feet bags of vermiculite, (10) 3.8 cubic feet bales of peat moss, and (20) 2 cubic feet bags of G.B. Organics Harvest Supreme. Additionally, I picked up (10) 1 cubic foot bags of Malibu Compost Bu’s Blend, to mix into the top 1/2″ of soil. In a perfect world, all of the compost in the beds would be a Bu’s Blend, mixed with our own compost from our tumblers (two Envirocycle sourced from Craigslist, and one 270 gallon Jora compost tumbler) and from our worm hut, but the good stuff adds up when you have ~130 cubic feet of raised beds to fill. I got a quote from a local landscape supply store, and even with a wholesale discount that I’m privy to, it would have been a month’s worth of rent to fill with entirely Malibu Compost Bu’s Blend and their potting soil. We’re not made of money! And our own compost isn’t ready yet.
In no particular order, this is what we’re growing this season:
- Italian Sweet Basil
- Saladmore Bush Cucumbers
- Charantais Melon
- Jade, Gold, Emerald Zucchini
- Doll Babies Watermelon
- Garden Sunshine Peppers
- Ideal Market Beans
- Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans
- Black Beauty Tomatoes
- Brad’s Atomic Grape Tomatoes
- Garden Candy Tomatoes
- Sungold Tomatoes
- Super Sweet 100 Hybrid Tomatoes
- Golden Bantam Improved Corn
- Italian Heirloom Tomatoes
- Purple Russian Tomatoes
- German Pink Tomatoes
- Green Zebra Tomatoes
- Ground Cherry
- Chocolate Beauty Peppers
- Anaheim Peppers
- Shishito Peppers
- Chinese Spinach
…and I think that’s it? I grabbed all of that info from the seed database that we created to help ourselves get a wee bit organized! Additionally, we also have lots of flowers planted (nasturtium! coreopsis! bee balm! calendula!), sundry herbs (dill! mint! sage!), and our hearty kale plants that we planted back in November. Additionally, I have plans on sowing loads of cut-and-come-again lettuces in between the tomatoes and peppers, so we can harvest loads of greens before those plants get too big and shade them out entirely. I’m going to attempt this high intensity growing technique that I watched on MIGardener’s YouTube channel.
Now that (mostly) everything is planted, my one mission this weekend is to get some PVC hoop houses up, and cover the little seedlings up with either some cheesecloth, burlap that we already have, shade cloth, or lightweight gardening fabric. Really, I’m not married to any of them, it’ll just come down to whatever is least expensive and easily available. I’ve found one too many birds chomping on our seedlings, the aphids are already out in full force, and it’s slated to be a whopping 90 degrees next Monday. All of those call for some major protection! Additionally, since we garden exclusively in raised beds, the soil can dry out really easily, so I want to ensure that the seeds and young seedlings stay moist until their roots are established.
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