Spring Garden Update

As you can tell with my last posting being over a month ago, May is an especially busy month for a gardener who is also an academic. So to catch up with the garden updates, we are on about week 5 (or 6) of enjoying asparagus and perennial herbs from our garden. We are also now eating lettuce, radishes, and a little spinach (some of the lettuce was started inside and transplanted). The beets, turnips, carrots, swiss chard, shallots, and peas planted from seed are all up and growing. Onions, garlic, cabbage, broccoli, and shallots seem to be thriving in the cooler, damp weather. Unfortunately, the potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and basil did not like the freezing temps we had on Sunday night. Even though things were covered as best we could manage, we still lost about a 1/3rd of our tomatoes and all of our potatoes got “nipped”. We are hopeful that the potatoes will recover.

Still to put in, are celery, several varieties of beans, sweet corn, popcorn, winter and summer squash, cucumbers, and melons. We are also going to try planting some quinoa this year.

Our strawberry bed, a new addition to the garden this year, is doing pretty well. We planted Earliglow (early berry), Jewel (mid season berry), and Seascape (mid through late season berry). These will hopefully be summer long treats. For the big amounts to make jam with, we’ll be heading in a few weeks to Cobblestone Valley Farm located in Preble to pick their organic berries.

We also have a few cherries, mulberries, and maybe some pears, plums, and apples coming in this year from the fruit trees that we’ve planted over the last 4 years. They are still pretty young, and don’t expect too many fruits yet – but are hopeful we’ll get to taste a few anyway.