Back to the Garden

Today brought very pleasant weather, and it was time to make it officially planting day!  There was still some prep work to do, but it went fairly quickly, and in short order, I discovered that it was too warm in the sun for a sweatshirt.  What a contrast to the last few weeks!

Supplies at the ready?  Check!

Ready, set, TILL!













The official start of Spring is just around the corner, and my mouth is watering for the fresh veggies to come.  Some of them, however, won't be had for some time.  Corn is much slower than anything else we've chosen to plant, and I don't think we'll be enjoying that until well into the summer.  No matter.  All the crops are being planted in 2-week offsets, so there will be fresh coming up until mid-Fall.

The corn, we found, by reading the seed packets, does not get planted as we had originally planned, in a single row against the house.  Rather, it is supposed to be in a square block of plants, 3 seeds to a spot, to be thinned later to a pair of plants.  These plants are to be allowed to grow together for both support and better pollination, and improved pollination is presumably also the reason for planting in the square format.

There--the corn is in the ground, and the position of each set of 3 seeds marked by a flag. Not to worry about the footprints--that is the walkway between rows.  ;-)








The eggplant is also a new crop for us to try, and again, we were surprised to learn by way of research in the Sunset Western Garden Book that it is quite a sizeable plant.  Since the required planting pattern for the corn had edged out the space we had originally planned for the eggplant, we decided to allow the corn its space, and move the eggplant to containers. 

This is the first--I actually planted 2 pots of eggplant.  You will see them in the final photo.

Next up were the radishes, quick growers, and I also opted for the plant pot method for them.  We were surprised to find what we did not notice at the time of purchase:  we have a packet with a mix of radish varieties.  Should prove interesting, as we've never before had any but the 'standard' round red ones about the size of cherry tomatoes or smaller.

This area is too shaded.  It was only potted here, next to the water faucet.  It has been moved out next to the eggplant pots up against my studio.

Finally, I put in the green onions.  They went up past the corn, and in the front row, rather than against the house.  They, too, are fairly quick growers, and the second succession of plantings can be moved, in case I decide to put in more corn later.  We'll have to play it by ear--or eye--or maybe mouth! ;-)

Naturally, nothing is showing up yet, and it looks like the same bare-dirt photos as the last article, with just a few sticks added.  But those sticks are road maps...and just you wait...before long, there will be pix of seedlings to show off!

So, here is the final layout, requiring shots from two angles:

The orange flag between the plant pots is marked 'eggplant' and has an arrow indicating the pots on either side.  The brown pot holds the radishes.