| May is my favorite garden month because everything is so fresh and wonderful looking. Plus lots of good things to eat and much to anticipate. Here’s what’s happening in my garden: Not all my pea seed germinated. What did — looks fabulous. First planting (of 3 plantings) is 3 1/2 feet tall and clinging nicely to the sticks I stuck in the bed. Has pods already, although still flat.  First plantings of peas. New Lettuce everywhere! Twelve varieties. I’m in heaven. Stuff from last fall is still sweet and delicious although starting to stalk.  Lettuce everywhere! Yeh!! Peas show in background. Broccoli and onions show.  Baby Reine Des Glaces lettuce. One of my favorites! Mizuna is gorgeous as well as delicious. I’ve planted 3 times so far. Arugula – gorgeous as always. Pulled a lot up so it wouldn’t take over the garden. Still eating Hakurei turnips with more on the way.  Hakurei turnips with a little lettuce mixed in. Eggplant seedlings in the grow bags and growing! Have two other varieties in jugs to germinate. Chard — beautiful! Three varieties. Cabbage is heading. Looks good. Two varieties.  Cabbage is heading. Broccoli is starting to form broccoli. Two varieties.  Broccoli Beets – two varieties. Look better than any beets I’ve ever had. Thinned them this year. Usually, I don’t because I just want the greens — this year I want both.  These beets were the first of 3 plantings this season. Usually don’t grow carrots, but tried some this year. Only two wanted to germinate. Russian Kale. Still eating that planted last fall. Mild and delicious with no hint of bitterness. Still blooming and forming seed. Spring planted ones are also doing good. I’ll soon be able to harvest new potatoes from those volunteers from last year. Three rows of potatoes planted this spring look great. Did it different this year in the interest of time and space. Did not cut seed potatoes and planted closer together. I think my soil is rich enough to accommodate that. My final planting of potatoes for this year will go in this week.  Potatoes. Onions fabulous. Starting to bulb. Out of this world delicious. Rationing to 3 a day until they get bigger.  Onions are starting to bulb. Mache (corn salad) going to seed already. Radishes planted continually since February. We’ve eaten a lot. But I’ve rationed to 4 a day since March — and I don’t like to ration! Lots more coming. Spinach is still sweet. Will pick a big bowl of spinach, beet greens and chard tomorrow and have baked greens (and onions) with an easy and honest to goodness cornbread! (no flour — just cornmeal — and it’s so much better than with flour!)  Spinach and Chard. Still harvesting asparagus. Spears are not quite as big as last year. (I think it’s the roots from the monster trees 30 feet or more away! We’ll see.) Still tastes great. Probably will stop harvesting June 1st. Not all my tomato plants are in the garden yet. Those that are look good. In different stages of growth. The one from the seed I saved last year — looks better than any. They’ll all do ok in the long term.  Tomato plant from seed I saved last year. Lipstick peppers in the garden. Other varieties will take their assigned spots this week. Still small of course. Cukes are germinating. Planted via wintersown method to give me a bit more time. Where in the world will I put them? Planted squash via wintersown method. Buys me time. I hope a space to plant will turn up. Strawberries still doing good. A medium basket a day. Perfect for eating fresh. Blueberries are growing. I’m glad I don’t have to pick right now, because there is so much else to do. Raspberries are forming. Blackberries are forming. Plenty of figs forming. All kinds of wintersown seedlings have been transplanted to the garden and borders. Borage, aztec spinach, malabar, magenta spreen, chinese celery, lovage, parsley, rosemary, lavender, sorrel, nettle and more.
Strange Sweet Potato Story: Saved a favorite sweet potato from last year. Put it in a grow bag in late winter. Wanted to see if it would give me slips. Nothing showing on top — so looked for it today. Dug around the entire grow bag looking for that potato. Nothing to be found. Soil is gorgeous. Guess I’m not going to plant sweet potatoes this year. How’s your garden doing?  I plant Marguerite in the garden as food for beneficials. It's just starting to bloom. ____ Organic Gardening is easy, effective, efficient —- and it’s a lot healthier. ____ All content including photos is copyrighted by TendingMyGarden.com. All Rights Reserved. Sweet William (Dianthus Barbatus) is a wildflower that originated in the mountain areas of Europe. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing it naturalized in the landscape. But according to most accounts it has spread and grows wild throughout most of the United States. These easy, beautiful, hardy, and multicolored plants have taken a front and center position in my borders for many years. They add color like nothing else can and go with just about everything else you’ll ever have. And the patterns in the frilly petals help make these flowers exceptional. The colors that vary from white, pinks to rose, and burgundy to red are guaranteed to get lots of oohs and ahhs from every visitor to your garden.  Red, pink and pure white - Sweet William. Sweet Williams, like most dianthus, have a spicy clove-like scent. (Think of a carnation.) I buy Sweet William seed by the pound and scatter/sow it in the spring and again in late summer and fall all around my borders that edge our acre of ground. Although Sweet William is suppose to be a biennial and bloom the second year after planted, I’ve had them bloom the first year. But even if you have to wait — believe me they’re worth it.  Multicolored Sweet William bloom. To get them started and make sure you have continuous bloom, sow seed every year. That way you’ll always have bloom and you’ll always have some new plants getting ready to bloom the following year.  Red and pink Sweet William blooms. Bloom time is long. Two months of bloom is the norm in my borders and sometimes three months.  Shades of pink and red. After the flowers fade and the seed is set, I collect it and scatter it throughout my borders where it’s needed. The seed of some cultivars is said not to bear true to the parent. To tell you the truth, I never paid much attention — I just know it’s still beautiful.  Shades of pink and white Sweet William. Most of my borders are mulched, but on the edges (which is where I like to sow Sweet William) the straw is thin and at times non-existent. Fortunately, Sweet William is drought tolerant to a degree. Where I am in Virginia, periods of drought are normal. In spite of that, the only time I ever lost this wonderful plant was several years ago during the longest drought I ever remember.  White and red Sweet William with Oenothera blooms. Sweet Williams are excellent cut flowers, but I like them best complimenting the blooms of my other perennials and annuals in the borders. Once you have these wildflowers in your garden, you’ll never want to be without them. The beauty they add to your existing plants is amazing. So if you don’t have any — plan to order Sweet William. And order enough that you can sow now and then sow again in late summer and fall for the best possible results.  Blooms on these Sweet Williams are blood red and look fabulous with the other blue and yellow blooms. A Source: Vermont Wildflower Farm  Red Sweet William Bloom ________ Organic Gardening is easy, effective, efficient — and it’s a lot healthier. ________ All content including photos is copyrighted by TendingMyGarden.com. All Rights Reserved Bill and I have always disliked turnips. Then last year we heard rave reviews about the Japanese Hakurei turnips. Although I could hardly believe that we would enjoy any kind of turnip, I tried them last fall. We loved them! In my hopes to get some delicious Hakurei turnips ahead of the season, I sowed the Hakurei seed in a jug via the wintersown method on January 28, 2012 and another the second week in February. The first jug I transplanted into the garden on February 22nd and the second jug was transplanted into the garden on March 8th. The roots on the seedlings looked good and my hopes were high. The Results I was not disappointed. They may have been a little slower growing than when you direct seed into the garden in the spring, but they did reach just the right size just after mid-April. Since then we’ve enjoyed more than a dozen with others waiting in garden from those same two plantings.  Hakurei turnips at just the right size to be melt in your mouth delicious. The larger ones have a 2inch diameter and the smaller ones are about 1 1/2 inches. Preferred Preparation I’ve read that a lot of folks like them raw, but our preferred method of preparation is roasting with just a rubbing of olive oil. Tender, sweet, and wonderful! Bill considers the sauteed turnips greens served with a roasted turnip on top to be a gourmet treat. Final Thought Experimenting with the wintersown method has had some pretty nice payoffs. These early garden treats are one of the best. _____ Related Posts: Seed Starting-Another Variation of Wintersown You Can Plant in December Warm Weather Crops and the Winter Sown Method Seed Starting – Peppers – An Observation _____ Organic Gardening is easy, effective, efficient — and it’s a lot healthier. _____ All content including photos is copyrighted by TendingMyGarden.com. All Rights Reserved. Last year I told you about how and why I lost my main crop of Honeoye Strawberries. I grow Honeoye as a main crop because they resist berry rot, have good flavor and if necessary, will hold for at least a day to finish ripening on my table. They are an excellent main crop berry. We freeze as many as we eat fresh and when you thaw the frozen ones and serve over vanilla ice cream — WOW! I had hoped to have the Honeoyes recover this year, but because of some digging we had to do to remove invasive roots from some “junk” trees that traveled about 30 feet or more — the berries were once again set back. It was too late in the spring for the berries to make a total recovery from being moved; so although they’re alive and trying to produce — they’re far from what they should be. Not to worry — I always have back up. I don’t go without strawberries when something happens to my main crop.  The 3 on the left are Tristar strawberries. The ones on the right are Earliglow. Earliglow – The first to ripen and the sweetest! About four years ago I ordered several kinds of berries. As is often the case in my garden, I ran out of space. So I planted the Earliglow here and there along the outside edge of my flower borders.  Earliglow lovin’ it in the flower border. Most of the plants did ok, but there was one spot in my border that Earliglow loved! So in paying attention to what nature was telling me — I left them there. Each year I thin them, take out the ones working their way to the back of the border, cut off the old foliage right after fruiting, and give them some compost in the spring. About 10 or 15 strawberry plants give me lots of sweet berries for fresh eating each day. Earliglow is probably the sweetest strawberry you will every taste! I don’t grow Earliglow as a main crop because I find it more prone to berry rot. Also, even though I pick daily and pick all the ripe ones, I like to pick those that are one day away from being ripe. I leave them on my kitchen table to ripen completely by the next morning. This strategy keeps the birds from getting many prime fruits. Earliglow cooperates to a degree with this strategy — but Honeoye does it better — which is why Honeoye is my main strawberry crop. Tristar – Everbearing At the same time I was planting Earliglow along my flower borders I planted a few everbearing Tristar in the garden. I always thought of everbearing as not giving enough fruit to be of value. But I was shocked when they gave me delicious strawberries off and on through July and again in the fall long after other strawberries have said goodbye for the year. I didn’t keep track of the exact time between bearing, but according to what I read they bear every six weeks in summer and into fall — and that sounds about right. Almost half made it through the severe drought year. The next year they had to share the bed with other crops because I needed the space. This year I’ve given them enough room to accommodate a couple of dozen plants.  A couple of dozen Tristar strawberry plants in the garden.
The leaves look stronger than any strawberry I’ve ever had and the berries have been huge — a bit more than 2 inches long and a diameter of about 1 1/2 inches.  Close up of Tristar strawberry plant leaves. Tristar has a good flavor although not real sweet like Earliglow. But when there’s no other fresh strawberry to be had — believe me they’re a special treat! To be Successful – Remember
Strawberries don’t compete well with grass and if you place them in that type of situation your plants will be small and and berries will be few. So if you want beautiful foot high plants that give you gallons of berries — plant them in a deeply prepared bed rich with organic matter. Then mulch. Final Thoughts If you have some spinach left in your garden try my strawberry salad. You won’t believe how delicious it is! And if for some reason you don’t have strawberries — PLEASE — plan to plant and treat yourself to one of the most delicious fruits on earth — when they’re grown in your own garden. _____ Other Posts on Strawberries: Stawberry Salad – A Treat to End the Season Strawberries – Back-up Made the Silver Lining 16 Points to Help You Grow and Enjoy Strawberries All Year Strawberries – A Reminder _____ Organic Gardening is easy, effective, efficient and it’s a lot healthier. _____ All content including photos is copyrighted by TendingMyGarden.com. All Rights Reserved. Things are starting to grow quickly now. This is a great time to visit before the warm weather crops of tomatoes, cukes, and squash along with asparagus ferns make it a jungle of plants. I hope you enjoy it.  Approaching my garden gate.  Entering the garden and looking to the back border. (looking east.)  North end of the garden looking Southeast toward poppy beds and back and side borders.  Entering the North gate looking south to the blueberry bushes.  Middle of garden on west side looking south to blueberry bushes. Tomato seedling at the bottom of picture have just been put in.  Almost at blueberries in south west corner looking north. Thanks for stopping by. _____ Organic Gardening is easy, effective, efficient — and it’s a lot healthier. _____ All content including photos are copyrighted by TendingMyGarden.com. All Rights Reserved. To assure that you can have lettuce to eat everyday in some of the off-season months you have to plant far more than you think you’ll need. Continuous planting in the fall — with a little protection through the winter — will give you a bounty of salads long before your spring plantings have germinated. And when it gets hot — and you think it’s time to pull up your stalked lettuce — don’t. You’ll be amazed at how much delicious lettuce you can get from stalked lettuce in the heat of summer — if you know what to look for. So be slow to pull up your lettuce and try to have some in every shady spot in your garden. Since I can’t have you with me in the garden to show you when the stalked lettuce is all-of-a-sudden eatable again — I’m going to try to describe it to you in a post this summer. I hope I find the right words — because you’ll be amazed at how the weather can change bitter to sweet. So in anticipation of that post, start paying attention to how lettuce looks — you’ll need to be an expert on that to get lettuce in July and August. To recap make plans to: - Plant far more than you think you’ll need.
- Plant continuously in the fall. (And in the spring!)
- Have some lettuce in every shady spot in the garden and DON’T pull it up when it stalks!
With this 3 point plan, you’ll have lettuce fresh from the garden in off-season months. ______ Organic Gardening is easy, effective, efficient —- and it’s a lot healthier. ________ Other Posts on Lettuce: Lettuce – There’s No Right or Wrong Way
Greens – Now is the Time to Plan for the Heat of Summer
Lettuce – Eating Fresh Even After it Stalks
Lettuce – Delicious as a Cooked Green Lettuce Bitter? Secrets to Keeping it Tasty
Lettuce – Spinning Like a Great Chef
Spinach Talk Lettuce – Favorites, Tips, and Several Sources Lettuce – Plant in the Fall – Harvest for 3 Seasons Lettuce – A Teaser and Reminder
Lettuce – Time to Plant ______ All content including photos is copyright by TendingMyGarden.com. All Rights Reserved. Quite by accident, I may have come up with my best variation of the wintersown method so far for warm weather crops. On March 15th I filled the bottom half of two jugs with my grow mix and added about 1/8 cup of compost to the mix. I planted about 7 eggplant seeds of one variety in one and 3 seeds in another. Taped the bottom part of the jugs to the top parts. I put the jugs on top of the washing machine in the porch until the seed germinated. As soon as it did, I moved the jugs outside. My original intent was to transplant each plant to individual pots. Then it got cold again so I left them in the jugs. They were growing. It got warm again and I had other priorities. They continued to get bigger. Then it got cold again. I peaked through the top and things looked ok, but I was a bit worried about what I’d find when I took the top off. Finally today, I took the tops off the jugs and couldn’t have been more pleased. They looked fabulous!  Eggplant seedlings. May 4th.  Remaining seedlings. Tomatoes, Peppers, and Eggplant. All grown outside in a jug using a variation of the winter sown method. My notes for next year include: - Wait until the end of March or first of April to start my eggplant.
- Do it exactly as described above.
- By the time they’re the size in the picture, it’ll be time to put them in the garden.
Final Thoughts What a time saver! No watching, no watering, no worries. I’m liking this winter-sown method more all the time. _______ Related Posts: Peppers – It Ain’t Necessarily So You Can Plant in December Warm Weather Crops and the Winter Sown Method Seed Starting – Peppers – An Observation _______ Organic Gardening is easy, effective, efficient and it’s a lot healthier. _______ All content including photos is copyrighted by TendingMyGarden.com All Rights Reserved. Probably the two greatest secrets to having an ongoing fresh harvest from your garden is to plant continually and increase the varieties you plant. They’re obvious things really, but somehow they’re overlooked by many gardeners. It’s hard for me to believe that many never figure this out because they just go along with what everyone else is doing and considers “normal” for gardening. All the gardeners I knew before I started to garden planted crops once and harvested once. They just about worked themselves to death with harvesting and preserving. I’ve known quite a few who no longer garden because they came to hate it so much. Sometimes when gardening comes up and various folks find out we depend heavily on our garden they picture me —slaving in the hot sun all day, harvesting hour after hour and then canning for days at a time. (They’ve told me this.) I tell them that’s certainly not me — no way! But they can’t relate – so, I just drop it. First of all, I never work in the hot sun because I don’t like the heat. I do most garden and border maintenance in the cool months. The only thing I do in summer is harvest, check for bugs on squash and potatoes, and pick my 5 minutes worth of weeds each day. I spend approximately an hour in the morning and an hour just before sundown in the garden. If I do it all in the AM I don’t go out in the evening. Secondly, I wouldn’t think of spending day and after day — or even one full day — on preserving. I do all that little by little. - I freeze my berries daily. That takes all of about 10 minutes after I bring them in.
- Onions are easy as pie and take very little time to cure in order to have them keep longer.
- About the most I do with tomatoes is when I get the quantity needed to fix roasted tomato sauce. That might take an hour of actual work from start to finish (not counting cooking time) maybe once a week.
- I freeze peppers when I start getting excess. That just takes only a few minutes each time.
- I limit the amount of peas I plant. I want enough for 12 quarts plus fresh eating in season. Shelling takes some time but after that I just put them in the freezer bag. I don’t bother with blanching because I use up what I freeze each year rather than keep it over. My peas taste just like fresh!
- With each picking of string beans, I eat a portion and freeze a portion. Succession planting keeps them coming until frost.
Continual planting helps make all this possible. For example – one reader wrote to me last year and indicated she didn’t know what to do with all the radishes she had maturing. You’ll never have that problem if you plant a little spot (about 3 x 3) of radishes every week starting in early spring through May and harvest and eat daily when they’re mature. The same goes for lettuce, other greens, beets, and Russian Kale, and string beans. And mark your calendar to start planting again for fall in August. Your fall spinach, lettuce, kale and other plantings can insure that you’ll have greens for fresh salads a month early than gardeners waiting for next spring’s plantings to mature. Diversity in your garden is important. You’ve probably noticed when you start the seed of several varieties of tomatoes that some are more robust and do better than others. Some things will like your set of variables in your garden better than others will. You have to keep trying different ones to know. If you’ve only grown Cherry Belle radishes, try growing French Breakfast radishes and German Giants. (German Giants stay sweet and delicious when they get big— even in the heat.) And when you find one variety that you really love, still plant another variety as backup. If you’ve grown Straight 8 cukes seemingly forever, add Marketmore to your garden this year. Final Thoughts When you garden like I do and - don’t have to prepare the ground each year,
- don’t have to weed (except for about 5 minutes a day),
- don’t have to fertilize,
- don’t have to water,
but - plant continually and
- spend minutes instead of hours preserving your bounty for the winter,
- harvest a little each day, and
- diversify crops to see what varieties to best
you’ll be having a lot more fun than most gardeners AND your harvest will be greater and longer. ___________ Organic Garden is easy, effective, efficient — and it’s a lot healthier. __________ All content including photos is copyright by TendingMyGarden.com In spite of feeling an urgency to get my plants in the garden — I’ve really tried to pay attention to what the weather and the plants are saying rather than hurry things along. I’ve started my warm weather crops with variations of the wintersown method and with excellent results. The seedlings are healthy, green, robust and growing! (You know my past experience with pepper seedlings. ) So I’m trying to pay attention to how the seedlings are reacting to different variables. My first peppers were planted March 18th. (I’ve already started more.) I planted in cell packs, put the cell packs in a flat and brought it inside to germinate — which was about two weeks plus.  Cell packs of pepper seedlings in a flat. Then two days later I transplanted 3 to a jug prepared in the wintersown fashion and put them outside. On April 15th I removed the top part of several jugs and left them exposed to the air on warm days and under my coldframe during that cold rainy spell we had. I left the other jugs closed and out in the open.  Pepper seedling that had top of jug removed looks good, but the ones inside the jug look even bigger.  Pepper seedlings that remained longer in the jug. I noticed today that the peppers still in the jugs are almost twice as big as the ones that have had the tops of the jugs removed — even though they’ve been under the coldframe. I think that pretty much confirms what we knew already —that peppers like warm weather and when we try to push them along they just sit there and don’t grow until conditions change. Also it shows me that those jugs make amazing little greenhouses! All my observations may not make a bit of difference in the end result. But I’m sure am enjoying experimenting with different variations of the wintersown method. I wonder where I’m going to put all these peppers?
______ Related Posts: Peppers – It Ain’t Necessarily So You Can Plant in December Warm Weather Crops and the Winter Sown Method ______ Organic Gardening is Easy, Effective, Efficient and it’s a lot healthier. ______ All content including photos is copyrighted by TendingMyGarden.com. All Rights Reserved. As much iberis (candytuft), oenothera (pink primrose) and bathes pink (a great dianthus) as I have around — it seems that I always have places that need some. They make the borders so colorful in spring. So every year I try to plant more of each in spots that need it. My timing is not specific — just whenever I get to it — usually during bloom — which is when I remember and when I can see where it needs to go. I don’t pay a lot of attention to them after they’re planted. It’s pretty much stick it in the ground and forget it. As I walked around the border with a fist full of oenothera root divisions the other day, I was surprised to see that many of those thin wisps of stems and roots that I had planted last year actually made it. That got me to thinking about watering. It’s very popular and in my opinion very overrated. I’m about the only gardener I know of that doesn’t water. Of course, the primary reason that all came about was because I didn’t have any means of watering or buying any kind of system for watering when I started gardening. So — I never watered — unless you count carrying a bucket or two of water to certain plants now and again. After 34 years — I consider watering just something else to do and I don’t need another task. It seems to be pretty well understood that it’s bad to over-water seedlings because their roots need to breathe and too much water keeps them from doing that. But few understand that the same principle can apply to plants in the ground. It can be a wonderful thing to furnish plants water during a drought. But with watering being so popular — and considered “the thing you have to do” if you garden — I think most people over-water and really don’t have a clue as to when plants need water and when they don’t. Anyone I’ve known who waters, seems to go by the soil surface. If that’s dry, they think the plants need to be watered. Some at least will stick their finger in the ground an inch or two to see if it’s moist, but most just can’t resist watering the minute the surface seems dry. Plants and people are a lot alike when it comes to watering. We all need to be watered, but if we’re not allowed to experience some hard times (no watering) then we don’t put down deep roots. Deep roots hold us firm and allow us to make it when the going gets tough. My plants have deep roots and they make it through almost everything without my assistance. ________ Related Posts One Reason Plants Wilt and Actions that Help Ten Reasons to Mulch Needs One Inch of Rain a Week! Oh Yeah? Should You Garden if You Can’t Water? Yes! How’s Your Garden in This Drought? Adding Organic Matter – 2nd Key to Soil Improvement ________ Organic Gardening is easy, effective, efficient and it’s a lot healthier. ________ All content including photos is copyrighted by TendingMyGarden.com. All Rights Reserved. | Receive my new posts via email:Thank You for Visiting!
My name is Theresa and I've been organic gardening in Virginia for more than 34 years and have been cooking for more than 50. Please stop by often to be entertained, encouraged, and learn things about organic gardening and cooking the easy way --- here a little, there a little --- from my stories, tips, anecdotes, experiences, and explanations. What readers say:" I like your way of gardening! Not much hassle but great rewards." "I love your common-sense approach to gardening." "---that’s why I’m a reader here – no “overwhelm” just practical advice – that works." "I’ve been gardening for over 30 years but have learned so much from your posts. I appreciate your thoroughness and orderliness. Thanks so much." "Gardening is so much easier and productive since I've met you, Theresa. I really mean that--you have helped me so much! I used to break my back fighting weeds, poor soil, etc. Not any more!" |
