Do-Over

Back in January I sketched out a plan for what I wanted to plant in which square. Of course, you know what they say about best-laid plans. Because I had a good number of seedlings die off and because some of the early/late crops either didn't work out or I figured I could do them in the same square, I had to do some rearranging. This is the new grid, followed by a picture of the actual garden (everything is planted, except the yellow corn, which will be planted in a month or so).


And, how it looks as of today:


Ive trimmed down the spinach and the mesclun greens and pulled one head of buttercrunch lettuce. I'm trying to get the strawberries enough light, and I'm also concerned that the yellow bell pepper might not get enough light. Its bracketed by the onions, the potatoes, and the peas on three sides.

I've got two closeups from the box. First, the massive cherry tomato I've raised from seed:

Next are the four snow peas:


I put a bamboo rod in the center and tied twine from the corners of the square to the notches on the bamboo to train the peas to climb.

I also have a little natural experiment going down at the bottom of the yard. Throughout this whole process I've had excess plants, seedlings mostly. First, I had the peat pots which didn't sprout, or the leftover seedlings which didn't make it into the nursery pots or the garden, or which were not as promising as the others who came out of the same hole in the box. Instead of throwing them out, I've just stuck them in the ground down at the end of the fenceline. I've also been dumping soil and throwing out peat pots down there. Its been pretty interesting. Ive got about four pea plants, a bunch of seedlings and some pretty vigorous tomato plants (I have no idea which kind), and today I planted some excess pepper plants I had. I don't water these plants or anything. I essentially want to see what will happen just by the process of nature, versus being in a tended garden with special soil.


The peach tree has set fruit also. There are probably about 30 of these little guys all over the tree:


In addition to the peach tree, the pomegranate (which I thought was perhaps dead) and the Mexican plum are both blooming.

Finally, I added two links to the section at the right. The first is the show "Central Texas Gardening" and the second, "dissertation to dirt," is by a former PhD student who now interns or something at Johnson's backyard garden (our CSA).

January Plantings

On January 21 I planted my first round of crops. I put in spinach, mesclun greens, buttercrunch lettuce, red onion slips, potatoes, strawberries, and carrots, laid out like this:


Everything was pretty basic, but the potatoes were somewhat difficult. As you can see below, I had to dig out the square, then put 4 potatoes at the bottom of the square, then cover them slightly with some dirt. As they sprout and send up runners, I have to keep sprinkling dirt over the new greens. At any rate this is kind of a pain in the ass. Given that potatoes are pretty inexpensive I don't know if I will be doing them next year.


We'll see how these come up, but I feel fairly confident (I don't think I'll end up with a situation quite like these guys, but soon)...

Update- I have some pictures from earlier today. These are the strawberries and the onions, both are doing great. I don't know about the strawberries because each plant has 3 stalks coming off of the main trunk or root. Mel says its 4 strawberries to a square foot, so I dont know if these count as one or each plant needs to be trimmed down to only 1 stalk.

Another picture, and the spinach has just started to come up.