Harvest Monday: First Asparagus

Our first outdoor harvest of the year was 8 spears of asparagus from my neglected asparagus bed.

The bed was neglected because I didn't clear off the fronds from last year, it hasn't been weeded in at least 10 months, and its only water has been our occasional rain. Yet, it still produced. I'd love to expand the bed at some point once we finalize some more of the garden structures on the property; right now the area it could expand into is covered with garden supplies (and has some pretty intense weed pressure, so I'd love to solarize it).

The garden is on schedule, while Mother Nature is running a bit ahead. Our last frost is normally May 13, but I think it already occurred on April 24. I still won't be putting any tender plants out until May 15, although my peppers and tomatoes are already mostly hardened off and will be moved into a greenhouse as soon as I can get our tent put up.

Development of the great garden expansion of 2021 continues. We had an exciting addition last week: electricity and water run to the garden. This kicked off my serious research of a drip irrigation system. Parts were ordered on Saturday and should arrive this week so it can be installed well before Memorial Day.

I've slowly been constructing beds in the garden. Upon further reflection I decided to completely change my garden plan to conform to standard rows. This will facilitate easier watering, path creation/mulching, and increase the production of the garden (an unintentional side effect). I haven't finished placing all the plants because of the unexpected new room available, but don't be surprised if I fill it with tomatoes.

(click for larger version)

I started creating beds and planting closest to the house (the south end of the garden) and I've planted all the way up to the potatoes. Now I have the entire month of May to finish the rest (and get the paths mulched). I have May 20 - 31 off from work, so that shouldn't be a problem and I can do it at a leisurely pace.

To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting today, check out Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Happy Acres.

A Very Muddy Work Day

What happens when you have just one day set aside to rent a sod cutter to get ready for your raised beds, and it rains for days and days before that? Lucky for me, I now have this experience and can answer the question.

1. The sod cutter wheels get caked with mud and fail to grip, so it requires some man-handling.
2. The sod is much, much heavier than it would be if given a few days to try out.
3. Carrying the sod to its resting place for composting turns your husband into Mud Man.

I just pulled these clothes out of the dryer. They're amazingly clean.

We stripped the sod from a roughly 65' x 6' area. I have an in-progress picture, but won't get another one until we dig out the bits that refused to be cut and it dries up a bit. Currently, we've just created a mud pit. It rained all day the day after we did this.

The bed on the right up against the retaining wall is home to about a half dozen raspberry plants, and a lot of weeds. We used some of the cut sod to smother the weeds and mulch the bed. The area in the middle will soon be home to eight 6' x 3' raised beds.

The upper garden is much further along. On April 23 I completed the prep and planting of the bed along the fence. What was once a forest of weeds and unwanted landscaping plants is now home to 50+ garlic plants, 200 onion plants, and 21 asparagus crowns.

Last week we had a landscaping crew on our property for two days, working to clean out the overgrowth and weeds around the property. Part of what they did for me was clear out a roughly 800 square foot area that will become the main part of the upper garden. I got two areas planted on Saturday - the strawberry/rhubarb patch (24 ever-bearing strawberries; rhubarb was existing) and the pea patch. I planted two 7-foot rows of peas along both sides of the temporary fence, and around the two tripod structures I found on the property. There's still room for another row, so I think I'll plant radishes here on the next dry day if I can find some seeds in my stash.

I also spent a lot of time this weekend potting up plants. In fact, my phone just died because I was down in the basement so long listening to podcasts, so I don't have any pictures. I'll have to save those for next time!

Head on over to Our Happy Acres for Harvest Monday to see what other gardeners are harvesting, prepping, planting, or preserving!

Harvest Monday: Peas & Carrots

There were lots of harvests at Gross Farms 2.0 this week, but I was terrible at photography them (it doesn't help that my memory on my iPhone is full, so I have to delete photos before I can take more).

Monday - Thursday I picked the last of the sugar snap peas. They had terrible germination, but the plants that did grow produced well. I'll definitely grow them again next year (Sugar Lace), but I'll give them the support of a small bunny fence—even though the package says no support needed. It lies.

On Thursday I picked the first St. Valery carrots and two gorgeous fennel bulbs. I had my eye on this soup recipe to break in my new pressure canner, but I didn't have enough carrots for it yet. I used some of the fennel fronds to make fennel tea, which was quite delicious.

Sunday was a day of garden transition. We picked the last of the snow peas (an entire gallon bag full) and ripped them out. They'll be planted again next year as well (Mammoth Melting) but with a much taller fence to climb. I ripped out the fava beans that never produced (planted too late), and harvested the rest of my 5' x 3' bed of carrots, which included St. Valery, Cosmic Purple, Lunar White, and a rainbow mix. For some reason, the white carrots never really want to do their thing. I'd estimate I got about 10 pounds of carrots total. Plenty to make the soup, which made a delicious Sunday dinner.

I also got my first handful of green beans, and my second head of broccoli. I'm eagerly awaiting the first zucchini.

The snow peas were replaced with chiogga beets, the carrots were replaced with red bush beans, and the favas were replaced with more carrots.  If I can keep the soil wet so they germinate, this will be my first year with a semi-successful mid-summer plant rotation.

To see what other gardeners are harvesting this week, check out Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions.

The Garden Is (Mostly) In!

If it wasn't for a bum ankle, we would have finished all the items on our garden to-do list this weekend. But, I severely sprained my ankle on Friday and couldn't put much weight on it Saturday. On Sunday, I puttered around the garden with a crutch, and today I could walk (slowly) with my foot in a brace.

Every bed that we planted first had to be weeded. Mom did a great job weeding the entire garden in April, but those stinking weeds grow fast! Here's what we accomplished (no pictures because were chased in my rain when it was all finished):

• Weeded 6 8'x3' beds and 4 3'x3' beds
• Planted 32 tomatoes, 41 peppers, 10 parsley, 4 dill, 12 cucumbers, 4 kale, lettuce bed, 5 cilantro, 5 fennel, 6 eggplant, miscellaneous zinnias, 1 brussel sprout, herb garden
• Mulched all those beds
• Dug 2-foot deep post holes for our gate
• Anchored the arbor to the ground
• Put up 21 tomato cages (need to get a few more, and stake the indeterminants with rebar.

Yup, that's a lot, but we still have to:

• Plant 24 basil, 5 squash, 32 corn
• Harvest the spinach and transition that bed to rutabaga
• Build A-frame for the cucumbers
• More weeding (never ending)
• Plant flower containers for front of house.

Beans for Mother's Day

On Mother's Day, I planted the first of our beans—pole beans. This year I'm growing Purple Trionfino and Rattlesnake beans. I like these because they're purple, which makes them easy to pick. Every year that I've grown beans I've lost my trellis to severe thunderstorms, so this year I'm trying something different—bamboo teepees. Yup, I'm finally growing my pole beans on poles. The teepees have 6 poles each, and I planted 6 seeds per pole as the packet instructed. That sure seems like a lot of beans. Of course, less than 24 hours after planting a line of sever weather came marching through, and the teepees seem to be taking it well. Once it stops raining and it's a little less soggy outside, I'll plant the next round of beans—favas (first time growing those).

Yesterday I also transplanted four heads of red leaf lettuce, seeded three square feet of chard (4 seeds per foot), and planted nine square feet of beets (9 seeds per foot). I potted up about half of the pepper seedlings, and will do the rest later this week. The biggest task was to move a bunch of woodchips from the back of our lot line (where the landscaper got a little overzealous and encroached on our neighbor's lot) to the front of the garden to give the hedge some growing room. My job was easy—lay down newspaper 20" from the hedge line. Aaron actually hauled all the woodchips from back to front. He did an excellent job.

On Thursday, my father-in-law delivered the new arbor and gate he made for us. Isn't it gorgeous?

The gate (not pictured) will be attached to two 4 x 4's that need to be dug into the ground. They'll attach directly to the front of the gate. This year, I'm planning to grow Morning Glories up and over the arbor (I got some seeds for free with a Seed Savers order). Next year, perhaps beans, malabar spinach, or even some squash or melons. Once those posts are in the ground, nothing will pull this over.

Since I'm linking this to Daphne's Harvest Monday post, I should talk about what I harvested.

See that fresh basil on top of the chicken parmesan? I harvested the tops of three seedlings so I could garnish the dinner I made for me and my parents. It was a useful harvest, not just because it was DELICIOUS, but because I normally pick the top off the basil early to encourage it to branch out and form additional stems. For the record, the sauce was homemade, but from a local farmer's tomatoes because I didn't have a garden last year.

Spring Garden Update & Lessons Learned

Lessons I've learned so far in 2014, the first year starting seeds and gardening in our new house:

• I need to pay more attention to my seedlings. In the last house, I went down to the basement almost every day for one reason or another, so it was natural to check on them. In this house, the basement is strictly storage so I have to intentionally go down there. I haven't done it enough, and my seedlings have gone dry too often.
• Aaron has a genius idea to solve this problem that includes creating a reservoir that keeps a constant level of bottom water in the seed trays. We'll see if this comes to fruition in 2015.
• I need to water our raised beds more often. One of the benefits of raised beds is increased drainage. The beds at this house are twice as high as the beds at our last house, and it seems like they dry out twice as fast (but they give me more soft, loamy dirt to grow root vegetables in). My ultimate plan is to have a drip irrigation system installed, and water multiple times per day on a timer. Since that includes installing over 100 feet of underground, outdoor plumbing, it's not on the list for this year.
• Adding mulch after direct seeding does more harm than good. While trying to combat the previously mentioned watering problem, I covered newly seeded peas and radishes with straw. It seems to me that they've been very slow to come up. This could be due to a variety of factors, but I think I'll stick with mulching after plants are established from now on.
• I need to digitize my seed-starting calendar. I diligently mapped out my seed-starting calendar, but left it in the basement (see lesson #1). I also packed every week's seed starting activities on weekends. While I didn't miss any major dates, I could have had a less stressful winter/spring if I had done just a little bit of work each day, and had electronic reminders pop up on my phone so I wouldn't forget. Dear internet, is there an app for that?
• Next year, I'm going to try sowing onion seeds in cells. I always sow them by broadcasting in a container and just grow a clump of onions. I bet they'd develop a lot more before transplanting if they weren't so crowded.
• I definitely need to cover my beds (either with mulch or a cover crop) over the winter. The beds that were covered with thick layers of landscaping straw were almost weed free this spring. The other beds looked like small weed forests. If it weren't for the help of my husband and parents, I'd still be weeding those beds. I'm not sure if I"ll just mulch everything next year, or try planting something like rye that should keep the weeds out (and enrich the soil).
• While I'm excited that I'm going to recoup a majority of my seed starting costs by starting seeds for friends, I need to plan that better as well. I should either close orders earlier so I have more time to get a handle on what will be started, or just have a first-come, first-serve plant sale in the spring. If anyone reading this would have a preference for buying seeds from friends, let me know!

That's all the lessons that come to mind at the moment...plenty for it just being the first weekend in May.

Here's what I accomplished this weekend:

• Transplanted 200 onions (8-8'foot rows)
• Transplanted 25 onions to be harvested as scallions
• Transplanted 75 leeks (3-8's rows)
• Transplanted 4 broccoli plants
• Transplanted 2 cauliflower plants
• Transplanted 5 celery plants
• Transplanted some "miracle chives" - they survived the winter in a dark garage!
• Seeded 120 carrots (8-5' rows)
• Seeded approximately 100 peas (2-8' rows)
• Seeded 48 radishes
• Started seeds for cucumbers, squash, zinnias, and corn
• Up-potted some broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce I'm holding for friends

I still have a lot more seeding on my list, which I'm hoping to accomplish throughout the week.

I'm very happy with the soil quality in the raised beds—it's full of wriggly worms! I used a garden blend topsoil mix that had a lot of compost in it, and it seems to be full of life. The garlic (the only thing really growing right now) is kicking butt!

Driveway Container Garden

We are still eagerly awaiting the arrival of the construction crew to backfill our yard and seed our lawn. Until then, construction of Gross Farms 2.0 is on hold.

However, I couldn't take another day without something edible growing outside our home. This morning we took a trip to the greenhouse and farmers market to get some things growing in pots. I was careful not to go overboard, but make sure we had all of the herbs we like to use fresh.

First, at the greenhouse we came across a beautiful clay planter planted with four different varieties of rosemary. For the cost of what we would normally pay for the empty planter, we have excellent starts of one of our favorite herbs that is very hard to grow here. Yes, I know rosemary grows like a weed in some climates, but it's mainly an annual for us so it's hard to get it growing to a size suitable for harvest until late in the season. From left to right, the varieties are Foxtail, Spice Island, Common Rosemary, and Gold Dust.

The next planter was rescued from the garden pile in our garage and filled with starts picked up at the farmers market. It includes chives in the middle, flanked by parsley and cilantro. There's a basil plant on each end, although the top of one broke off when I transplanted it. There are tiny leaves left below where the stem broke, so I'm cautiously optimistic that it will regenerate. 

While at the greenhouse I came across some attractive, yet affordable plastic circular planters. In the largest I planted Fernleaf Dill surrounded by sage, Italian Oregano, Hot & Spice Oregano (a variety I've never heard of but had to try) and thyme. Hopefully this plant will be overflowing with herbs in a few weeks.

We purchased three of the smaller version of this pot, and each holds its own pepper plant. We got Jimmy Nardello for a sweet pepper, Kung Pao for a medium pepper, and Thai Chili for a hot pepper. I may edge these containers with flowers (nasturtiums?) as the peppers get a bit bigger. Rounding out the driveway gang is another pot of basil (aquaponicly grown basil we got at a dinner last night—I hope it adapts to the soil) and a small pot of spearmint. 

We only get late morning/afternoon sun in the driveway and afternoon sun on the porch. These containers really belong in the back yard but we can't do that until the dirt pile is knocked down. Hopefully they'll do alright in their current location for a few weeks.

Our CSA should be starting any week now, so my need for greens should be fulfilled. I can't wait to start building the new garden.

I Will Not Be Defeated

As I briefly alluded to in my previous post, our fall garden bed (chard, beets, turnips, carrots) was overrun with pests that ate off the top of all the tender seedlings. Generally, I'd assume September is too late to start all over again, but I'm going to ride the wave of this crazy climate year and hope our last frost doesn't hit until the end of October. I've replanted the chard, beets, and most of the carrots. I'd run out of St. Valery carrot seeds as well as all turnip seeds.

To ward off the pest, I've already treated the bed for slugs, and I also sprinkled ground pepper over everything. I read on Garden Web that ground pepper is a deterrent for mice, voles, and other crawly critters. Hopefully, this will keep them away until I can get some row covers purchased and installed.

The beets and chard rows are covered with wet burlap, and the carrot rows are covered with boards to help speed germination and stop the ground from drying out so fast. I will try to be diligent - I'd really like some fall/winter greens and root vegetables.

Do you take any special precautions with your fall garden?

Planting Day: Intern Edition

This weekend was a transformation for the garden. On Saturday I woke up and got to work early - I was in the garden by 7:00 a.m. I tilled the 3.5 beds that hadn't been planted yet, added compost, and was about to call it a day and leave all the planting for Sunday when Aaron told me "the tomatoes need to get in the ground. Now."

He was right. They weren't staying moist in their small pots, which they were outgrowing, and many of the leaves were starting to yellow. So, we rolled up our sleeves and planted 27 tomatoes, which were promptly mulched and watered in. They already look happier.

That's the tomatoes in the back bed, as well as the left half of the middle bed.

The major work day was Sunday. I planted broccoli, celery, basil, and parsley from transplants, and then "the intern" arrived. My friend Melissa is interested in starting a garden, and she asked if she could come by and help me plant mine. Never one to turn down free, willing labor, I agreed.

We got to work planting pepper (28) and eggplant (3) transplants. Then, it was on to direct-seeded crops. We planted two types of cucumbers, papaya squash, and 8-ball and black beauty zucchini. Then it was time to tackle the weeds on the back fence, again. They're nothing like they were before, but I'm trying to get them every time they come up so I can stay ahead in the battle. The back fence is where a variety of pole and bush beans will grow. I wanted to plant them today, but the soil was too dry for my tastes; tilling it would have created a dust cloud. I'll wait until after the rain that's supposed to head our way.

The sad, dry, back bed, just waiting for some peas.
Bed on top right includes peppers, eggplants, and newly-seeded summer squash.

The afternoon was dedicated to containers. I potted up some extra sage, thyme, and oregano, planted a few pots full of nasturtiums, and planted fennel and carrots in some large planters that are now located in the garden. I gave an uprooted chives plant a semi-permanent home in a large pot (it was kicked out of the garden bed to make way for broccoli), and planted dill in a pot since I bumped it out of the beds to plant more peppers. We also got two beautiful hanging planters from my parents, so Aaron affixed them to the fence between garden rows and I planted nasturtiums. I must say, with the exception of the empty back fence line, the garden looks lovely.

From back: 2 pots of newly-seeded nasturtiums, oregon, sage

From back: sage, two pots of newly-seeded nasturtiums, and thyme.

I was very thankful for Melissa's help, and even more so for her photography. She took some great shots in the garden. Here are a handful of them.

Peppers in their "pots" waiting to be planted. Spaced approximately one per square foot.

The earlier portion of the garden. I believe this is Bloomsdale spinach.

More of the spring garden. Assorted lettuces from Pine Tree lettuce mix.

Name That Fungus

For not getting started until about 2:00, I got a decent amount of work done in the garden today. I'll go through all of that before I give you that chance to "name that fungus."

First, I freed my tomato seedlings from the confines of the mini greenhouse and gave them an afternoon on the patio. Although a few are a bit leggy (mostly the cherry-type tomatoes), they're looking pretty good.

Next on the list was to prepare my mom's herb and flower pots. I started zinnias and a variety of herbs for her this spring. She's on vacation with dad for another week yet (they took a month-long cruise), but I want the pots to be ready for her when she gets back on Mother's Day. They're a little sad looking right now, but they'll definitely fill out. Each pot contains two genovese basil, one special basil (lemon in one pot and Thai in another), sage, parsley, oregano and thyme.

After potting up the zinnias (no pics - they're pretty boring without flowers), I used the leftover potting soil to put three of my tomatoes in hanging pots. I've never grown tomatoes in hanging pots before, but they're part of a special strategy.

When we expanded the garden last year, we gave my sister-in-law an open invitation to stop by whenever she wanted and take whatever she needed. Normally, she brought her kids (both under the age of 5) with her. Those kids LOVE vegetables, particularly tomatoes. They must think that cherry tomatoes are made just for them (because they're so tiny). I love to see my niece and nephew eating so many vegetables, but we noticed that we got a lot smaller harvest of our favorite cherry tomatoes, Blondkopfchen. I don't have room for extra cherry tomatoes in the garden, but I'm planting them in hanging pots along the driveway so as the kids come up towards the garden, they'll see those tomatoes first. As far as I'm concerned, they can eat every single tomato on these plants. That leaves more for me in the back :)

From front to back there's Matt's Wild Cherry, Blondkopfchen, and Currant. The currant tomatoes are tiny, and I usually don't have the patience to eat them except for snacking, but perhaps small children will. Also, the currant plant grew into an unmanageable bush the last time I grew it, so I can imagine it being kind of pretty as it cascades over the pot. My only concern is that the stems will snap as they lean over the pot, but I'll see how that goes as they develop.

If this experiment fails, that's ok. I have 50 more tomato seedlings, and room for less than half that in my garden.

Since I had the herbs out for my mom's pots, I also planted my herb box. I've been trying to find a place for a perennial herb garden in the back yard, but I don't think it's going to happen this year. The box will have to do.

Front Row (L to R): thyme, oregano, sage
Middle Row (L to R): mammoth basil, Thai basil, lime basil, lemon basil
Back Row (L to R): large rosemary from last year, parsley (2), smal rosemary from last year

That was the end of the fun stuff. Then, I finally had to start weeding out the back fence line. There's a lot of space to plant back there, but it's completely overrun with weeds. Many of them are terrible spreaders that come through the fence from our back and side neighbors. At some point we'll need to address this with some sort of permanent solution, but for now I just try to fight them. See how nice and green it is back there? Too bad it's nothing I want. You can see there's a tiny section on the right that has already been weeded. That was Mom's contribution 3 weeks ago and I haven't done anything since.

There's creeping charlie, but there is also some sort of weed that seems to be very fond of our arbor vitae stumps. It looks like this. Any idea what it is? The root system is crazy, and I swear it creates worms - they're everywhere wherever this weed grows.

After and hour and a half, I'd made some progress. I now have two clear areas in front of the trellises to plant. For sure, pole beans are growing up the trellis (there will be two more trellises to the left with more pole beans planted slightly later). I don't want to waste the space in front of the beans, but I also don't want to plant something I need to trample over to get my bean harvest (I'll harvest most of them as green beans). Any ideas?

Now, it's time for Name That Fungus. I think it's a fungus, anyway. When I got back towards the trellis, I found a couple of these things. They look like a mushroom from afar, but have the texture of candle wax. They only grew near the trellis, which is cedar. Any idea what it is? I was pretty disgusted by it, but I'm intrigued.

Onion Planting & More

This weekend I planted onions. Lots and lots of onions. I started these from seed in early February, and hardened them off over the last week. On Saturday my mom and I got 160 Sweet Spanish Onions planted in less than an hour just minutes before Easter dinner. Today I planted another 48 Yellow of Parma and 48 Redwing. I'm using square foot gardening spacing, which recommends 16 per square foot for onions; all those onions fit in 16 square feet of garden space. I must say, I felt like I was planting a field of grass one blade at a time. I also planted 72 leeks in eight square feet.

I ended up having to till my soil prior to planting, which I didn't want to do. The top was so dry, using a pitchfork was just giving me giant balls of dirt. The tiller made quick work of it, and I (well, Mom) raked three bags of compost and a couple pounds of bone meal into the bed.

While I was planting onions, Aaron put together our two small green houses so they'll be ready to receive plants when I run out of room in the basement.

After Easter dinner I was feeling a little antsy, so I decided to pot up my tomato plants. I have 56 plants in pots now, with plans to use only 25-30 in my garden and hanging planters. Looks like my family and friends will receive tomatoes as gifts this year.

This afternoon I prepared the other half of my early planting bed, and Mom planted six square feet of Carnival Carrots. While she planted carrots, I worked on a second sowing of peas, arugula, lettuce, spinach, and radishes. I need to get more carrots, turnips, beets, and radishes into the early bed. I made some seed mats for carrots tonight (thanks for the idea, Granny!), and hope to get them in the garden sometime this week - next weekend at the latest.

Aaron's hops are coming along wonderfully, and his third-year crowns are spreading along the fence. Once they grow up the twine a bit, I'll be planting zinnias in between the crowns.

In other garden news, the garlic is a smashing success, and the chives my neighbor threw over the back fence last year have come back with gusto. Now I just have to figure out where I'm going to construct my perennial herb bed so I can move them to their final resting place.

And, I had a pleasant surprise this weekend. My rhubarb plant is coming up in the front of the house. I thought for sure I had managed to kill it last year, but it's coming back. I'm not sure I'll be able to harvest anything from it this year (I planted it last year), but at least I know it's there.

First Day in the 2012 Garden

There isn't a whole lot going on in the backyard in March, but with the highs consistently in the 70's for a few weeks (what, global warming?) we had to get out into the garden to do some work. Here's how the garden looked before we started to wake it up from its winter nap yesterday.

The garlic, however, seems to have woken up on its own just fine. This is great, as it's the first year I've planted garlic and I was concerned that I hadn't planted it in optimal soil conditions.

The day's work included weeding one of the garden beds. Grass seems to find its way from the paths to the beds constantly. We've got a project underway to take care of that, but that's for another blog post, when we're hopefully much further along.

After weeding what I could see, I removed our winter "comforter compost" (just a covering of last fall's yard waste) from half the bed and found some more grass and weeds. After quickly taking care of them, it was off to find the compost.

We have a compost pile against the fence at the back of our garden, but I haven't been very good about turning it and I don't currently have a screen to sift it. So, much of this year's compost will be purchased. I covered a 4' x 8' section of one bed with three 3/4 cubic yard bags of composted manure. I didn't even mix it in; just arranged it on top. Over time, the rain will seep through and mix the compost into the soil. Also, the soil is still a little wet, so the inch or so layer of compost gives me some soft ground to plant in.

Speaking of planting, I decided I couldn't waste this great weather and had to experiment by planting some of my cool-weather crops, which I normally wouldn't plant for another month. This year I'm using the square foot gardening method for most of my beds. Last year I planted in rows, and I felt like I wasted a ton of space. Since I'm new to this, I wanted a physical reminder of what a square foot looks like. I got out some twine and a staple gun and created a square foot grid.

The grid only covers 8' of the 16' bed, as I didn't need to plant the other portion yet and I wanted to leave the comforter compost to do its work.

With the grid laid out, I planted:

• Knight Peas (2 squares of 16)
• Sugar Lace Peas (2 squares of 16)
• Toppers Turnips (1 square of 9)
• Tokyo Cross Turnips (1 square of 9)
• Cherry Belle Radishes (1 square of 16)
• Easter Egg Radishes (1 square of 16)
• French Breakfast Radishes (1 square of 16)
• Boltardy Beets (1 square of 16)
• Early Wonder Beets (1 square of 16)
• Crosby Egyptian Beets (1 square of 16)
• Pine Tree Lettuce Mix (2 squares of 4)
• Arugula (2 squares of 9)
• Dash Spinach (1 square of 9)

If all goes well, I'll be eating from the garden in mid-April. Considering I don't have any winter plantings, that's a Wisconsin miracle!

The other garden news is we have a new acquisition: a heavy-duty garden cart. We found this little baby on sale at Lowe's for $50. Great deal, and a great way to haul stuff around the garden and avoid extra trips to the garage.