Planting and more planting

The windbreaker was required for much of today's gardening.
Except during the much-too-infrequent-and brief sunbreaks,
which warmed things up enough to make even a light jacket uncomfortably warm!

I did some planting last Sunday but worked late in the yard and didn’t get around to making my weekly blog post. Here’s what got planted last week on 5/16/2010 (all seed from Territorial Seed Company):

Beets (Bed #2)

• Red Ace Hybrid - 55 days
  
• Touchstone Gold - 53 days

Carrots (Bed #3)

• Yaya
• Bolero

Broccoli (Bed #4)

• Packman - 66-75 days
• Belstar - 70 days
• Arcadia - 55 days
• Southern Comet - 80 days

All beds (at each end):

• Assorted Marigold (seed saved from last year’s plants)

Sweet Peas (planter pot)

• Pink Cupid
• Sugar n’ Spice

And here’s what I’ve planted so far today (5/23/2010):

Cabbage (Bed #4)

• Parel (green) -2 50d
• Gonzales (green) – 1 55-60d
• Primero (red) – 2 72d

Chinese Cabbage (Bed #4)

• Soloist (baby cabbage) - 40-50 days

Bok Choi (Bed #4)

• Joi Choi - 45 days

There’s not much to show in the way of planting pictures since the just planted beds look pretty much like the unplanted beds and the few seeds from last week that are just now sprouting don’t really make for compelling blog photos.

I did finally get around to thinning the onion bed today.

It's painful to pull them up, but it's necessary for nice big onions later!

Some of the thinned plants came up with a respectable amount of root attached so I replanted the best of the bunch into one of the raised beds. If they survive we’ll eat them in salad as early onions. The rest of the thinnings will go into tonight’s salad along with some of the volunteer dill plants that found themselves in the way of progress.

Salvaged onions

Our tomato and pepper plants arrived from Territorial on 5/12/10. They always look alarmingly small in their tiny 2 inch pots!

Teeny-tiny tomatoes
(unfortunately, I didn't think to put something in for scale - trust me they're wee!)

Unfortunately, it’s not been warm enough to plant them out since the evening low temperature should be reliably around 50 (F) and the evenings are still unseasonably brisk (for instance, a few nights ago it was only 39 degrees!), not to mention stormy and windy. So the plants have been re-potted and are sheltering in the garage until Spring decides to finally take up residence here in the PNW.

Our moving dolly has been temporarily re-purposed into a Tomato Trolley to make it easier to move the plants in and out of the weather.

Tomatoes and Peppers soaking up the sun between showers today

ETA:

After my brief blogging and tea break, I went back out to the garden and planted some more seeds in the new raised bed.

Greens (Raised bed #5)

• Wild Garden Kale - 30 days
• Wild Garden Mustards - 30 days
• Valmaine Romain Lettuce
  
• Flashy Trout's Back Romain/Cos Lettuce
• Victoria Green Butterhead Lettuce
• Red Iceburg Crisphead Lettuce
• Bordeaux Red-veined Spinach
• Tyee Spinach

A delicious dinner salad with dill and baby onions

Mid-week Garden Update

ETA: For some reason blogger is not emailing me comments on the blog even though it is configured to do that. So thank you for the comments! I didn't know I had any until I was checking a past post for an unrelated reason and saw them.

(I know that's a wonderfully creative title! But sometimes the title is the hardest part of the blog post, seriously, so rather than not post for lack of a witty title I'm just calling this one like it is)

It seems like it has just been one weekend thing after another since we got back from DC. Just to recap:
First weekend: Garden Guy's back was out and I managed a good fall in the hall so both of us were out of business as far as gardening was concerned.
Second weekend: We had house guests.
Third weekend: I enjoyed a not-so-lovely weekend of gastroenteritis.

There has been gardening, just not nearly as much as planned and my planting is now officially behind schedule. Also, obviously, the garden journal blogging did not take place last weekend. So, in order to be caught up for this coming weekend I thought a quick mid-week garden update was in order.

Here's a visual update on the onions and potatoes planted before we left:

Onions waiting to be thinned

Unlike the other plantings, the potatoes are undaunted by the cold spring weather
(the potatoes also secretly think the other plants are wimps)

The fall planted garlic is coming right along too

Italian Late Garlic from Territorial Seed Company

My salad mix is still looking fairly puny and not at all impressive:

Sad salad mix...

What is rather amusing about it is that the more pathetic section on the left was actually planted approximately 2 weeks earlier* than the patch on the right which was planted 4/23/2010. I think between the unseasonably cold weather and the @#$%^ neighborhood squirrels, it just gave up. The plan is to have a hoop/plastic setup over the bed next year to facilitate earlier (and more successful) planting of salad greens.

I'm also proud to report that we have finally vanquished Hog Fuel Mountain, rototilled the front bed and generally restored some sense of order to the garden.

Garden Guy gets busy with the rototiller Saturday 5/1/2010

The garden as of Sunday 5/2/2010

The garden as I left for work Monday morning 5/10/10
Only one last patch of sod to eliminate!

And here's the updated view of the raised beds

Garden beds 5/9/2010

As you can see, we've added a new bed on the far end.

Okay, that's it for now. I'll planting some seeds this weekend and my tomato plants should be delivered in a couple of days - I just got a notice from Territorial that they'd been shipped.


*I don't have the date because someone, and again I suspect the neighborhood squirrel gang or the naughty blue jays are behind this (and for good reason I might add), removed my carefully notated planting marker.