Grow a vegetable garden

Eating sugar snap peas, strawberries turning red, Royal Purple bush beans germinating, garlic nearing harvest – this goal is done! If you’d like to read more about my gardening adventures, please visit my blog at http://highdesertgardening.blogspot.com Thanks for all the encouragement! ... and now, on to other goals!

Wish I could be on vacation every day, but gotta pay the bills somehow! Still, I AM on vacation today and I did enjoy the garden this morning…

• Planted out a whole packet of Royal Burgundy purple podded bush beans. Packet says 60 days to harvest. We’ll see. Last year’s yellow bush beans took more than 100 – I think the heat slowed them down. I planted earlier this year, so we’ll see what happens!

• Transplanted a Tomato Vera “Pepper” tomato – supposed to taste like a tomato but be hollow and blocky like a bell pepper.

• Transplanted 5 basil plants – 2 Mrs. Burns, 1 Purple Ruffles and 2 Genovese

• Pulled a bunch of weeds and used them as mulch around various places

• A few peas have flowers!

• Strawberries as big as my pinky fingernail; ones that didn’t bloom are throwing runners like crazy for next year’s plants! I should never have to buy strawberry plants again :-)

• Sowed 4 cucumber seeds – 2 Lemon Cukes and 2 Marketmore 86. There’s a bunch of seeds in each packet and I am tempted to plant them all, but they are heavy eaters and I don’t have enough prepared ground for them.

Don’t know if it really is or not, but statistically, it SHOULD BE. I am on vacation today and tomorrow, and while I am out of town most of today, I will have tomorrow to hang out in the garden and de-stress. So, if I believe that the Last Frost is Past, this is what I should be doing…

• Transplanting more basil and tomato plants – maybe nearly all of them

• Sowing more sunflower seeds to help assure fresh sunflower blooms throughout the summer

• Prepping the “squash” area and planting out Yellow Squash and Zucchini seeds

• Slowing down on watering the garlic

• Trying to keep the peas cool

• Transplanting oregano all around the place

• Cutting down more weeds and adding them to either the tree mulching project or the compost pile project

• Starting a worm composting area

• Starting my super mini-pond project

• Starting some marigolds

• Transplanting my lone day lily survivor outside

• Putting out some of my sweet potato cuttings

But, you know, here in the desert, I don’t mind ANYTHING that tries to grow here. I’ve been cutting back the biomass and using it as mulch – I figure anything that will grow in pure sand and produce biomass should be allowed to grow and even harvested. So, my lovely rescue apple tree is now nearly completely mulched about 1” deep. And the weeds actually seem to be thriving from having been cut back!

Peas are taking off. Maybe we’ll be snacking on peas in a month or so?

More stuff going on, and I can’t keep up with the updating – but I’m having a blast in the garden and really hope I can accomplish my goals with it:

1. Good food for our family
2. Good food for chickens
3. Good food for the local food pantry
4. Pretty plants to gaze upon

50 little basil babies are waiting impatiently for the winds to calm down and the last frost to go away. Even then, they will sulk until June or July as the nights will get down to the low 40 degrees F at night even when the days are twice that.

More than 60 sugar snap peas have broken ground, ranging from just above the soil to 4 inches tall.

Strawberries have flowers!

20 sunflower seeds have germinated – many have their first true leaves and a few are working on their second set.

Some of the transplanted oregano has survived and is now intent on taking over their little spot of desert. Gotta love those mediteranean herbs!

Apple trees bloomed – the day before a hard frost of 25*. Luckily, I got some photos… but I don’t think we’ll get any fruit. Oh, well, the blooms were pretty and the trees are lovely, green, provide shade and the birds and bugs love them. Reason enough for me!

Garlic is looking sooooo good – I want to dig them up NOW! But the hardnecks haven’t even begun to send up scapes yet, so I shall have to be patient.

Killed my sacrificial tomato in a mid-April hard frost.

The house is full of baby tomatoes, baby basil, misc. herbs and a few strugling peppers. Will the Last Frost of the Season please hurry up and be done? I’m eager to get these babies out of the house and into the ground! Good to have things to look forward to! I am truly blessed!

• Daffodils are blooming
• Nectarine tree is blooming
• Weeds are blooming
• Ash tree is blooming
• Maple trees are all full of fat leaf buds
• Garlic is growing like a weed
• 20 of 200 peas are up
• Strawberries putting out new leaves

Life is VERY GOOD!

The beginning of April signifies the beginning of the “crazy time” in the garden…

• 90 of 102 bulbs of garlic are up and running
• flower buds are fat and pink on the nectarine tree
• my “rescue” apple and my Stark Grand Gala apple trees have tiny green leaves
• a dozen or so toms got their second transplanting and a dozen or so toms got their first transplanting
• spring winds are a blowing
• weeds are a growing
• 6 peas of 200 have broken ground
• transplanted some oregano
• crocus are done blooming, but the daffodils are budding
• birds are making a ruckus
• bugs are starting to show up
• lemon balm is greening up
• time to sow sunflower seeds outside
• time to do some more indoor sowing – more basils, some monarda, more lemon balm, more bell peppers, and other herbs
• is it still too early to sow morning glory seeds indoors?
• holding our breath to see, did we REALLY get an early Spring and is the last frost REALLY past? I am beguiled by the unseasonably warm weather, but the realist in me says that there will be a few more hard frosts, still.

Last week sowed:
50 Sugar Bon Snap Peas
50 Sugar Snap Peas

and yesterday sowed 50 more of each.

None are up yet, but at least, since I got off my rear and actually planted the seeds, at least they have a chance! Only had 20 Sugar Snap plants last year, and that was WAYYYY to few!

The weeds have responded amazingly well to being watered – you can totally tell which ones have received the water blessing and which ones have not.

Ok, it’s getting close to that PLANT EXPLOSION time of year! More than 40 baby basil plants and a dozen tomatoes are working on popping out their first set of true leaves. A dozen more of each are barely pushing through the soil. This weekend it turns to MARCH and the start of my official Plant Planting Mania! Grow lights are glowing, the heat mat is warming baby roots and soon every window will have greenery gasping for every bit of winter sunshine. I love this time of year!