What's Growing

March 28, 2009 - It's not even April yet and things are progressing very quickly here at Zen Acres. Each weekend I update a running report I keep on the status of all our seedlings. The idea is that next year when I'm seeding, I'll be able to reference my notes to get a better idea of how much of each veggie to seed and what worked and what didn't.

The point of my story though, is that my list of vegetables that I have to keep tabs on is getting incredibly long! Here's the list so far -

Arugula

Mesclun

Onions

Bell peppers

Cayenne peppers

Habanero peppers

Eggplant

Romaine lettuce

Mixed lettuces

Brandywine tomatoes

Rainbow cherry tomatoes

Blondkopfchen cherry tomatoes

Crnkovic tomatoes

Czech's Bush tomatoes

German Pink tomatoes

Amish Paste tomatoes

Swiss chard

Broccoli

Cabbage

Brussells sprouts

Italian Basil

Sweet Basil

Purple Basil

Cilantro

Celery

Kale

And there's still more to be seeded in the next few weeks!!!

Today was an absolutely beautiful, warm, sunny day, so almost everything went out in the greenhouse. Here's the pretty shot of the happy plants -

Plus, last weekend we started our direct planting over in the garden at my mom's. We put a few pea seedlings that we had already started, plus a full row of new seeds into the ground. We also planted a short row of spinach and some radishes - not a favorite of ours, but they grow so quickly (3 weeks til harvest) that they're just really satisfying this time of year.

Since we were expecting a few nights below freezing right after our seeding, we covered the newly planted rows with some of the old greenhouse plastic, hoping it would keep it warm and moist for better germination. Upon examination today, it doesn't seem like anything's happened yet, but we've got our fingers crossed. The next few days are going to be pretty warm and the nights won't be below freezing, so we left the plastic off today.

The row on the left is where the peas and radishes are. The second row to the right of that is completely covered with plastic. We're hoping that by keeping it warm under there, any weed seeds will sprout and we can get rid of them before we plant the row.

We threw down a few rows of arugula seed today over there as well - it's our absolute favorite spring time treat.

Last but not least, we have garlic coming up! Last fall Joe planted several heads and last weekend they started to peak out of the soil. Today, they are really starting to look substantial!

We figure we've got around 40 or 50 plants in the ground, which will be a pretty decent harvest for our first time out. We eat a lot of garlic, so it probably won't supply us for a year, but it'll help. You know, even though you're generally supposed to plant garlic in the fall, I read that you can actually plant it in the spring too. Both plantings will be ready for harvest in the fall, but the spring planting will just be a bit smaller. I think we'll probably plant a few more heads soon, just to test this out. And because you can never have too much garlic.