Last week continued to be miserable with continual rain, gloom, and temperatures in the mid 40s F/ 6 C for six days. The heat in the house was still on and we have not yet raised the storm windows. It looked like we were getting a break for the weekend, but the updated forecast showed rain through the weekend. So when the sun came out last Friday for a period I decided it was time for some mud gardening. I headed off to the garden with my Dixondale onion plants, determined to get them into the ground.
The mild winter meant that weeds left in the garden last fall had a great opportunity to grow and put down huge roots. In the bed above, can you guess the row that had legumes growing in it? Of course that row is scheduled to get the peas this year and it will probably take me a half hour to dig out those weeds.
At least the garlic bed is looking good, enjoying the blood meal feeding I gave it.
It took me over an hour to prep the beds for the onions, weeding and adding some bagged McEnroe organic compost and a generous measure of Garden Tone organic fertilizer. Planting the onion plants was relatively fast after the bed preparation. Above are the Red Wing red storage onions.
Next I put in the Copra yellow storage onions. The one advantage of being late to plant is that the onion plants had already started to break dormancy. The plants are shipped dormant, looking quite dry and pale. Last year I got them in the ground earlier and commented that it took weeks for them to start to green up and break dormancy. You can see that the plants above are starting to show bright green foliage, indicating they are no longer dormant.
While it rained, I did take the opportunity to pot up some of my tomato and pepper plants. Above are my Juliet tomatoes in Solo cups, and the Lemon Drop peppers in 4-inch pots. While I had germination problems with the peppers and particularly the tomatoes. I have somewhat recovered. I will give an update inventory in another post.
Your weeds are wusses compared to the ones that grow in my mild winter! But I'm not complaining, rather humongous weeds than 40° in May, really?! I am so jealous of your garlic though, mine is an absolute disgusting rusty mess. No more garlic for me...
ReplyDeleteNormally the cold winters and hard freezes at least inhibit the weeds. This year we had shirt sleeve weather in February. Sorry about your garlic woes but I suspect the rust is a result of all that fog you get.
DeleteWow, it's still really chilly in your neck of the woods. Your garlic looks great and the tomatoes and peppers are definitely sizing up.
ReplyDeleteWe've been having a soggy spring as well. Not much fun, but it feels good to get things in the ground.
Your garden still looks great. Hope you don't have another monsoon season like last year.
DeleteThe Lemon Drop / Aji Limon chillis are notoriously recalcitrant when it comes to germination. None of my seeds (of them) germinated this year, and I'm relying on being able to keep alive two such plants from last year.
ReplyDeleteI know from experience. Last year I had a hard time getting a couple Lemon Drop seeds to germinate, this year I have 5 nice plants. But my Carmen and Super Shepherd were failures.
DeleteThat garlic looks wonderful! I've never given much attention to garlic but I might give mine some blood meal if that's what is helping yours look so good.
ReplyDeleteUgh, weeds are bad enough but for me having built new beds over the past two years, I'm still digging clumps of grass out.
I'll ditto what Susie said, that garlic looks great! Mine really seems to like a bit of nitrogen in spring. I'm trying Aji Lemon Drop this year too. And Carmen is coming back after an absence of a couple of years. Too bad yours didn't come up. I had to resow several peppers but I finally got them to come up, only to have aphids attack! It's always something.
ReplyDelete