is your garden in yet?

[hayshaker]

mine is still in the green house yesterday i planted some
sweet potato slips the squashes are comming up and i plan to plant some okra for timmestar
just don't know how she'll get'em. planting many peppers hot and sweet.
big bertha produce huge peppers.the vineyard is starting to show some leaves and the orchard is in bloom
as well. and aspearagus i gotta pick some today.

[Davidlastink]

Only doing tomatoes and peppers and goign to make a little carrot box for fun with the kids. I just started my toms and peps inside. Not safe to plant outside around here till memorial day. But these types have always produced well into October for me so far. I also have some left over seeds I will just toss into a shaded bed off the side of my garage and see what pops up. Last year I got a decent sized pumpkin as well as many pumpkin leaves. (The leaves when cooked well are decent)

Although my Oregano is full bore, but that stuff is basically like a weed and needs no care, nice mixed into salads or on samiches but I just used dry for cooking.

[hayshaker]

just picked a bag of aspearagus and planted some sweet potato slips
and the rasberry patch 15x90 is comming along nicley

[Rollicks]

I've got German butterball potatoes growing, started them mid april and I've had to hill them 3 times so far (yeesh). I just got some unknown fingerling potatoes and two types of oregano from my boss that I'm gonna plant today. Got Green onions, brussel sprouts and chili peppers planted last week and I'm about to do some elephant garlic. The weather in washington has been nice, 50's at night, 70's during the day. Oh! I almost forgot about the Goldings Hops, which will be for beer and hop tea. If you have trouble getting to sleep, drink some hop tea.

[Rick]

I've got some leaf lettuce ready to pick. Spinach is a little small yet and radishes are getting tall.

[canid]

I've pretty much got to garden vicariously this year as we are on stage II drought contingency.

[DSJohnson]

tomatoes and bell peppers in buckets. Green onions in the ground. No okra or corn this year..

[Winnie]

So far in the ground I have Broad Beans, Peas, Potatoes perennial Spinach, Kale, Broccoli and Asparagus and some dwarf Beans under cloches.
In the Greenhouse I have Tomatoes, Peppers, Sweetcorn, summer and winter Squash, Melon, Leeks and Oca just waiting for the last frosts before planting out.
The fruit trees and strawberries are blooming. I love this time of year.

[kyratshooter]

Tomatoes, peppers and okra go into the ground tomorrow.

Beans, peas and carrots probably Saturday. I have to till some old manure into the bed tomorrow.

I can not keep the chickens out of the lettuce. They pull it up and eat it faster than I can get to it. sometimes I think they stand there and wait for it to send up green sprouts!

[crashdive123]

Just doing tomatoes, basil and oregano this year. They are doing great. Even keeping the birds out....pics later.

[hunter63]

tomatoes and bell peppers in buckets. Green onions in the ground. No okra or corn this year..

That's gonna be us this year, as well.....cutting back again.
Neighbor just left with 4 wire tomato stands.........promised us some frozen 'maters.

[Rick]

I need some dry weather to finish planting. Just about the time the ground starts to dry out we get another soaker. We are supposed to have rain today through Monday.

[canid]

Hopefully we didn't steal it. We got a half decent rain yesterday. At first it rained a couple drops and then quit and I thought we'd lose one of our allowed days to a rain without measurable precipitation.

I'll trade you one or two of our warm dry weeks for a couple of your showers, so everybody wins.

[LowKey]

The snow here just finally melted in the back yard last week. Everything is a little slow coming on out there.

I have small gardens all over the yard plus the bigger vegetable garden.
Planted two new strawberry beds, one with plants I got for free with a tree order and the other from runners from the old bed.
Bought a couple cider crabapples, a couple medlars, a half dozen of virus-resistant hazelnut bushes and a dozen beach plums. The beach plums grow well here. I also got 25 xmas tree plugs (1 foot liners) to plant on the side property line. I'm going to lose all my native hemlocks to adelgids, so getting the little fellers started in deep pots so they'll be ready when the dead wood comes down.

The blackberry patch is leafing out and so are the raspberries. Time to go out and chop the runners on both to keep them under control.

I have 8 blueberry shrubs and got 4 more to make it an even dozen. They are just starting to leaf out.

The two tart cherry trees and the peach tree (all on dwarfing rootstock) just burst into full flower yesterday.

Last weekend I brought in a good load of cow manure and trenched it in. It was slightly more odiferous than usual even though it was "composted." Kinda looked like the guy extended his compost by mixing in some new stuff. Gives a whole new meaning to "the neighbors having a sh*t-fit." I totally expected the lake posse to show up, but they didn't. I'd have had a few words to say about all their lawn chemicals if they did. Once trenched and covered though, there is no smell.

I have the day off today so the vegetable garden is going in. The broccoli plants are already out there and the peas and onions went in before the ground was thawed. They're up and doing well. The garlic is a foot tall (planted last fall).

The tomatoes, sweet potato slips both started back in February, and the bean seeds go in today. Gonna wait another week for the cukes but I'll put in their trellises and plant the radishes down the center. I'll plant the pumpkin seeds in pots this year. I grow the hulless ones and those seeds are just as tasty to the ants and chipmunks as they are to me. I want more plants this year. And I have to pull the rest of the over-winter leaf mulch out of the cranberry bed and feed them. They get fish emulsion and blood meal. Then the bed has to be sanded to give the runners good ground contact so they'll root. You don't need to grow them in water. The water is just used to facilitate harvesting and to protect the plants from freezing in winter. It's totally possible to grow them on dry ground and pick them with a blueberry rake.

The mayapples are up and almost full size but haven't quite flowered yet. They seem unhappy where they are growing. Might be too much sun.
Last year I had a volunteer bed of tiny alpine strawberries give fruit. I waited and waited for them to turn red but they didn't. Ate one and found out they are the yellow type. Very tasty. No idea where they came from. This year the patch is about 4' around. They seem happy so will encourage them to keep spreading. Easier to grow than grass in that space.

I'm trying a low maintenance grass seed this year. It's more erosion control than "lawn." I don't do "lawn." Just trying to keep the front yard presentable until the shrubs get larger. A mix of deep rooted low-growing prairie grasses. Or so it said in the ad. Low-growing may be a relative term, though they promised a manageable 6-8". At least it came up, which is more than I can say for Scotts or Pennington...

Well, it's 7am and the neighbor has gone to work so I can go out to the garden now.

[hunter63]

LowKey, sound like a heck of a garden/system.....shades of ours 20 year ago.

Over the years we have backed off, kids gone, we don't eat as much and the labor, seems like labor, instead of fun.

I hear ya on the manure, neighbors had to move their Mother's Day back yard party into the front yard, one year....I'll never do that again.

[2dumb2kwit]

I'm not doing a garden, but I did plant a few 'mater plants and a few pepper plants in the flower beds, yesterday.

(Home Depot had Anaheim and New Mexico chile plants. I thought they were the same, with the exception of where they were grown, so I got one of each, to see if I can tell a difference.) Hahaha.

[canid]

Essentially the same (as the no 9 strain) at their point of differentiation (obviously) but with the anaheim being substantially tamed.

[1stimestar]

Nope, still too early here even though we are having an early spring.

[LowKey]

H63, it sounds more extensive than it really is. The raspberry bed is maybe 10' x 24'. The blackberry bed about the same or a little bigger. The 3 strawberry beds are about 8'x8'. I got a really good yield on the blackberries last year. The trees are planted all over the place, except on the leach field. Most are dwarf. The shrubs, I have to keep the blueberries out back so the birds don't decorate the neighbors' cars but otherwise they are making decorative hedges in various parts of the yard.

The vegetable garden is pretty big though. It would be bigger if I wasn't having a lot line dispute with the side neighbor and could cut down 3 big oak trees out on the back lot line...

It's just the right amount of work to get me out in the yard at night when I get home and on the weekends. Once the garden gets planted, there's nothing really much to do until stuff grows. LOL. So I get to go fishing on weekends and a little light weeding at night after work.

I was a botany/wildlife major in college. Love growing and working with plants. Hope to do it all my life.

[hunter63]

A well planed garden, that take advantage of companion planting, crop rotation, orientation to sun light (tall stuff in the back) and mixes of early, then later, in same areas .......add trellis's and intensive planting....and a lot of soil amendments.
Your use of trees, hedges, volunteers, and natural planting.....sounds like a heck of a system....
Got Pic's?

I used to brag, that nothing left the yard......was composted and reused.....LOL