plant a vegetable garden

So, I decided instead to make a NEW garden along the front of our porch. It is a southern exposure, so hopefully the tomatoes will get ripe. My husband is going to rent a sod-cutter for me, and then build me a raised bed. Plus it won’t be subject to digging from the dogs. Or, er, marking.

I am not getting too crazy with it this year – I am planning on a couple of tomato plants, a zucchini, maybe a few bush beans.

I have most of the vegetable garden planted.

I planted a small 10 X 10 plot near my shop seen here:

And while I am replanting my terrace garden and the fact I ran out of garden room I planted some in my terraced garden and will replace with perennials as the year progresses. seen here:

Last night I ran out at around 10:00 to cover my beautiful little starts of vegetables. The temp was predicted to be freezing and it was. Then it hailed and the wind blew like a tornado. fortunately my garden is situated such that the wind does not bother it and I was successful at protecting the starts from the pummel of hailstones.

We borrowed a neighbor’s rototiller this afternoon and turned over a fairly big patch, and staked and netted it (we have so many deer here that gardens almost need to be covered over in netting… they’re that persistent). We’ve got really excellent soil here so I don’t think we’ll need to fertilize very much. The next step, I guess, is to start planting, which we’ll (hopefully) get started on this weekend, if the weather stays nice.

I couldn’t stand it any longer. My vegetable beds are beautiful, clean, full of fresh new soil. I am worried that we may have one more frost maybe….but I planted bush peas, pole beans, and kale today anyway. the weather was beautiful and the beds were just screaming for fresh, new vegetable starts.

Today I am spreading more dirt into my three beds and getting a watering system into place. I wanted to plant this weekend but our weather here is still very cold and often frosty in the morning. I think I will have to wait one more week at least. I have my beds divided into three sections each making a total of nine sections. I am starting with cole crops because our coastal climate bodes well for these. I have decided to start the garden with starts from the nursery and then continue with my own sprouted seeds which I have going now. I think that will make maximum use of the growing time I have this year.

Yesterday I planted some seeds and will be planting others until the season is over. I want a running supply of plants for vegetables. I also put the iron sulphate on the beds and today’s rain should make it all crumble into the soil. My beds look beautiful. They are clean, no weeds, and the soil is good. Everything is ready for the planting.

It’s iron phosphate (Sluggo) that I need and I found it yesterday. Can’t do much of anything in the beds until the thunderstorms stop but I am eager to get going. Am doing eggshells, beer, and iron phosphate for major attack on slugs. They are prolific here.

Today we removed unwanted bushes from one bed in the garden, added soil ammendment, and weeded, turned the compost, and bought seeds to begin indoors. We need to add about 5 more bags of soil to one bed where the old soil has leached out and repair the bed. Looked for iron sulphate but didn’t find any so will look again this week. I am planting tomatoes, carrots, beans, chard, kale, parsley, other herbs and zucchini.

Today will be wet but I am going into the garden to prepare for spring planting. I need to get iron sulfate (?), the organic way to discourage slugs and snails and start crushing egg shells to line the walkways between the beds (for the same purpose). There is some weeding to do although I have been keeping up on that. I need to remove some other vegetation that died in the last frosts and prepare those spaces for planting more vegetables.