2013 Garden off to a Slow Start

Good morning Gardening Angels:

It's either dark and gloomy and interfering with our gardening this morning or we are happy the Good Lord is sending us the soil moisture we will need in the dry days of summer. We get to pick our attitude. 

I'm just hoping we don't get what Carol Deppe described as the year without a summer in her book The Resilient Gardener, where it started raining in April in Corvallis OR and rained for sixteen weeks. The book is a good read on being resilient. Hint: plant azolla in the puddles. :)

But our spring garden is off to a slow start, yet we have garlic, onyuns, lettuce, cabbiges, and red taters planted and sweet peas sprouting along the fence rows of plots 3 and 6 (the front two). I have our donated triple sweet sweetcorn seed ready to plant but soil temps must get to 60 degrees.

We need to:

1. Finish covering the cross walks with cardboard and mulch.

2. Clean out plot 1 (except for the rows of onions and 1/2 row of garlic) to plant corn there.

3. Clean out plot 5 where the turnips are - might be a few roots worth harvesting. Plant tomatoes and peas there.

4. Turn the compost pile.

5. Build a nice zinnia bed just to the right of the garden.

6. Erect 4 cattle panels across the central walkway to grow beans. These are the same as the entrance trellis.

Jan Dickey and Selby Horton are doing some exciting experiments in plot 6 with containers and vertical planting.

Dave Fitzgerald is monitoring the garlic closely, and will schedule a garlic pull party sometime soon.

We usually plant the summer garden by mid April and tomatoes and peppers by early May.

Our new flower garden project north of the alley behind north side of town square died a'wanting water. There is no water main, and cost to run a connection from the existing water main under the alley is a few thousand dollars. And the town had druther not dig into that old main saying they don't know what they would run into. So for now we will make a nice zinnia cut flower bed at the VG. 

I had grand plans for thousands of zinnias and sunflowers, a crazy container area, an old-man-of-the-woods 3' x 5' gnome, multiple fairy houses, bluebird nests, bird bath, hummingbird feeders, a trellis covered sitting area, a corn patch, a bean patch, a thornless blackberry patch, and a melon patch. Wes collaborated on the design and is creating a nice conceptual landscape design drawing. We will keep looking for a place.

As always your ideas and comments are welcome and needed!

I hope we can get back int the garden next week.

Ain't God good!

cw