How My Garden Grows

 

Just do to everything else going on, I haven't posted much on this year's garden so here is a picture that is hot off the press and maybe only two days old. We try to rotate out garden somewhat so last year we started planting from the right and worked left. This year we started left and are planting right, mostly. My wife did stick some sweet potatoes up next to the strawberries and garlic beds on the right so the vines don't compete with the peas which were the last row we planted on the left. 

Last night we were under a freeze warning but I think we were fortunate and it didn't quite get to us. My low was 34 degrees F. Our cherry blossoms had already been blooming for a week and winds have blown most of them off so I'm hoping we snuck our cherry crop pollination in if it did get colder than what I saw on my thermometer when I got up in the morning. 

Here are some of our warmer weather stuff growing in the greenhouse. The tomatoes and peppers on the left are actually extras and some of the better specimens have been repotted and are behind me in this photo if I had actually taken a picture of them. The peppers are all Japanese Shishito peppers which we planted two of last year for the first time and fell in love with them. They were prolific and I picked some of the later pickings from the plants and those have been a very tasty side dish for just about any savory meal. Normally I have eaten pickled asparagus but since we are restarting out bed, I've been a bit short of those and saving them for special occasions. But honestly, I prefer the pickled shishito peppers anyway. So this year I plan to pickle a couple peck of pickled peppers, if I can figure out how many peck of pickled peppers to pickle. See what I did there? Hah!

Speaking of asparagus, our new bed hasn't been doing so hot. I ordered 2 dozen crowns a couple years ago and they came way late in the year when the ground was parched and cold was fast approaching. I stuck them into the ground but freely admit, I didn't put as much care as I should have into bed preparations. Last year, about half of the asparagus sprouted and I was thinking that would be enough for now as it spreads and multiplies naturally. However, this spring, maybe only 25% of it was producing. So I dug around the ones that were producing asparagus and removed all the crappy old depleted soil. I bought 24 more new crowns from a local nursery where I could guarantee the freshness and they didn't have to spend how many days being shipped through the mail. I backfilled with a bunch of pure manure and some black river bottom dirt. I planted the crowns and covered with more of the good river bottom dirt which you can see in the below picture. 

I followed the directions to the letter and so I am waiting on the new crowns to sprout and I will use some of the better parts of the old soil I removed to backfill another 2 inches onto the sprouting sprigs of asparagus so that it is humped up slightly from the rest of the lawn. Hopefully this go around produces better results but it also means we have to wait another two more years before we can get any significant amounts of asparagus. Until then though, I will hopefully have plenty of shishito peppers.