Garden 2010

What's growing in our Zone 5/6 garden? Lots of things.

The boys and I (yes, all 3 of them!) planted several things on St. Patrick's Day. .
Traditionally, you plant your peas on St. Patrick's Day as a rule of thumb, so we planted 2 generous 4' rows of sugar snap peas. Next to that went 2 4' rows of broccoli, then the onion sets-again 2 rows. We'll plant more onions and broccoli in the next week or two.







I tried something new this year, well actually last year. I left a couple of my smaller onions that had a late harvest (think October) just sitting on top of the soil. I just wanted to see what they would do. Well, I should've spaced them out into organized rows because every single one ROOTED! These babies are going to be big. I think I'll just stick to using onion sets and planting them, rather than just leaving onions laying on top of the soil, though.












We pruned/thinned out the asparagus. That stuff I do not recommend for a beginner gardener.

It's totally a pain to keep in check. It's strong, it spreads when happy and it's ugly during the summertime. Asparagus is a root/tuber and thus, needs all of it's foliage to store up enough energy to produce the next Spring. You have to leave the foliage long in the summer. This stuff is well over 6' tall; I've experiemented and discovered I can prune it to 4' and it still grows well the next Spring. Brad really likes it otherwise, I'd get rid of it. The nice thing about asparagus is that it's a perennial, so once established and happy, it just grows on it's own. I don't fertilize it (well, I don't fertilize anything beyond using manure and kitchen scraps) and I barely water it or prune it.








The strawberries had better produce this season or they're outta here. This is another plant I would NOT recommned for a beginner. Talk about spreading! Jeez. These plants started off innocently enough, but have turned into agressive spreaders that have lept out of their raised bed and into my pathway, yard and other beds. They seem to be able to leap about 4-6'.




My Fall garlic is coming up nicely. I've had mixed results with garlic. The heads I get are very small and don't store well. Good thing we eat a LOT of garlic in this house.

The kids also planted a lot of sunflower seeds. If you're an avid gardener, you might think that's a risk planting them so early. The thing is that the south side of my house is really a micro-climate zone, probably about a Zone 7. The seedlings will have no trouble with our cold nights because the house will keep them warm. The other thing is that we live in the suburbs and have a heat island effect going on. All the concrete gives off heat on cool nights.

What's left to plant in the garden? Too much to even think about!

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