6/16/2009 – 3 More Beds Built, Filled and Planted

So, I’ve been busy in the garden since last time I wrote. I think last time I posted anything I had two beds planted with potatoes, onions, lettuce and carrots. Since then I built three more: a 4×6, a 4×4 and a 4×8. It was a lot of work! It was not so much the cutting and nailing together of the boards but the setting and leveling of the bed, the transporting of the composted horse manure from the front of the house to the back one wheelbarrow at a time, the digging out, separating from the grass and breaking up of the clay to mix with it, and the filling of the beds with the mixture. It was a lot of hard work, but very rewarding when I saw the finished product and was able to start planting! So, for the record, here is what I planted or transplanted in what beds and when.

• Wednesday, June 3rd – Transplanted four of the tomato plants into the 4×8 foot bed: 2 Japanese Black Trifele, 1 Manitoba and 1 Blondkopfchen.
• Saturday, June 6th – Transplanted two more tomatoes into the 4×8 foot bed: 1 Manitoba and 1 Blondkopfchen. Transplanted 9 Lacinato Kale, 12 Di Cicco Broccoli, and 6 more lettuce plants into the new 4×6 foot bed. Hilled up the potatoes.
• Tuesday, June 9th – Transplanted peppers and eggplants: 4 Jalapeños, 3 Thai Hot Peppers, 4 Napoleon Sweet Peppers and 3 Lao Green Stripe Eggplants in the 4×4 foot bed, and 1 Napoleon Sweet and 1 Eggplant in the 4×8 foot bed (to give them a little extra spacing to see what difference that might make).
• Saturday, June 13th – Thinned Danver’s Half Long Carrots and moved some into the new 4×6 foot bed. Planted some cilantro, 9 Empress Beans, 8 Fin de Bagnol Beans, some French Breakfast Radishes and 4 Early Blood Turnips (Beets) in the new 4×6 foot bed in between the kale/broccoli and the lettuce that were on each end.

In you’re a beginner gardener reading this, note that I am a beginner too (or at least I am at the time I’m writing this) and that a lot of these things I probably got in the ground way later than I should have. The kale and broccoli in particular should have been in the ground a month or more ago, I think. I just didn’t have a place to put them until a week or two ago, so I got them transplanted when I could. We’ll see how everything does, and I can always improve the timing and the process next year. I’ll definitely be keeping y’all updated.  :)

Anyway, beside the joy of getting most of the beds built and most everything planted (I still have Early Fortune Cucumbers and Amish Snap Peas to put in), I got to see everything I had already planted grow! Since I’ve never done this before and don’t know what to expect, I was pleasantly surprised for example to see that the potato plants develop flowers on them. And so far, the colors of the flowers correspond to the colors of the potatoes, more/less. I’ve got blueish-purple flowers coming up from the All Blue Potatoes and white flowers coming up from a whiter variety (can’t remember the name…some other ones that Hillary gave me). The red potatoes still haven’t developed flowers, so we’ll see what those look like when they come. Anyway, I love going out every day and looking at their progress. It’s pretty amazing. I took some photos after I got all these main beds planted and put them in a mini-slideshow. Take a look!