Thursday, March 1, 2012

Getting Growing Again

We've really had a lot of rain recently and that, coupled with very warm temperatures, has made things start to take off this week.
Almost all of the onions have broken the surface - I'm so using more nitrogen on them this year. My goal is to have onions that bulb up this year.
Here you can see the broccoli in the foreground and in the back corner box, you've got some cabbage which, as always, I just plant because I can and not because I think I'll get anything out of them. Cabbage worms have done me in every season except for one. I'm about to use some seriously bad chemicals on them. I may not eat the cabbages after that, but I'll get sick pleasure out of annihilating the worms.
My lettuce is starting to sprout.
And....woohoo! Potatoes! This is the first year I'm doing potatoes in boxes. The last two years I've done them in pots, but this year I've given an entire giant bed to them. Hopefully I'll get tons of them. I'm thinking I can dig some up as I need them and let the plants stay in the ground, right? With the pots, once I upended them, that was it. Hopefully this other way will work for me.[Image]There's still that nasty issue of the far corner bed falling apart. Rotting, rather. After the cabbage has either been eaten or sacrificed, I'll likely take the bottom boards off and just slide down the top boards. I'll distribute the excess soil across the other beds. Not sure if it will be too shaded by the other beds since it will now be half their height, but we'll see.
Things are starting to pick up and I hope that means I'll be blogging regularly again soon. What I REALLY need to do is start reading blogs again. The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

7 comments:

  1. As soon as your potatoes have blossomed, you can wiggle your fingers underneath and steal a few new potatoes without harming the plant, so it will keep growing and producing. I love them at that stage, so I always manage to steal most of them, and end up with very few mature potatoes :-)

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  2. I hear you on those onions! I have a different issue here though, mine consistently get large bulbs but they don't close up since they bolt so they won't dry properly, or is that what you mean? It's frustrating since I can't store them, I just dice and freeze them. I'm glad to see you back, I'm finally blogging regularly again after some pretty intermittent winter posting :)

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  3. I never plant brassicas without a row cover. I so hate those worms. Almost as much as slugs. Too bad row covers don't keep out the slugs.

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  4. Yippee!!!! I love this time of year when all my gardening 'friends' come out to play! Welcome back. I can't wait to watch them grow- Go get them worms! What about Bt, have you tried that? I bet it works on them just as well and is effective.

    I am so using Grannies idea- my first year for taters. ;-)

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  5. Instead of using "serious chemicals" to combat the cabbage eating caterpillars, why not just go with Bacillis thuringensis (Bt), which is not a chemical at all, but a disease that only affects the larval forms of various moths and butterflies. It is totally harmless to mammals and beeficial insects.

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  6. I've tried finding the BT around here and have only succeeded once at a feed store, but the next time I went back they were out. I do have some of that D. Earth (I can't spell it) that I used one year. I may try it again. Row covers always seem to fall apart for me.

    Erin, they bolt even before they bulb. I've never had them go to where I can store them. I think it just gets to hot too quickly here.

    Good to know I can steal potatoes, Granny. I can't wait!

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  7. To say we have gotten a little rain this year is an understatement. I feel like it this winter it has never stopped raining. Good to see you back on here.

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