Springtime Garden Happenings

May was not the best month for gardening here in Northern Nevada.   Frequent storms and foul weather kept me out of the garden most of the month, and I spent most of the time just hoping everything would survive the snow and cold.   Things are finally starting to get warmer here in June though, and the garden has suddenly pepped up.  As have I!  Here’s a look at what’s going on in the garden.

Front Yard Garden

FRONT YARD GARDEN

Most of my time has been spent in the Front Yard Garden. It gets a lot more full sun this time of year compared to the back yard, and is ideal for most of the stuff I have been planting. It’s been a lot of work though, separating and moving rock, and loosening up the compacted lifeless dirt. Lots of compost and soil amendment were added to make the soil something a vegetable would flourish in. Weeds don’t seem to mind compacted dirt, but healthy vegetables needs lots of well draining, nutrient rich soil.

So far I have two 3′ x 20′ beds and one 4′ x 13′ planted.  The final 4′ bed was prepped last night, and will be planted with potatoes this weekend.  The first bed in the photo above is planted with beets, radishes, peas, beans, spinach, and sun flowers.  The second bed has green and yellow squash, and one mound of cucumbers.  The third bed is full of tomato and pepper starters from the Greenhouse Garden center.  I also threw some cilantro seeds into an open space to see how they do out in the full sun.  I still have a final mound of rock to sift and move in the northwest corner of the garden, but it’s such a relief to have made it this far!

Many people ask me if I’m afraid to plant a garden out front.  It does make me a little nervous, but so far it has been ok.  Many people want to stop and talk about the garden, and I even overheard some teens walking by remarking that the garden was cool!  So far the biggest threat to the front yard garden has been the neighbor kid’s soccer ball. Hopefully the garden will be good advertising and encourage others to start their own.

Garden Journal

GARDEN JOURNAL

I’ve read of other gardeners keeping a journal, so I thought I’d give it a try this year. Every time I do something significant in the garden, I just make a quick entry with the date and what I did. Time goes by so quickly, and I tend to forget what I did when. So far the journal has been pretty helpful. When I’m waiting for new seedlings to emerge, I can look back in the journal to see when I planted and check if I’m on track or if something may be wrong. If I have some great successes or failures, the methods will be documented.

Radishes

EARLY HARVEST

Work in the garden has already begun to pay off. We’ve already been eating radishes and Swiss chard, and I’ve been throwing the thinnings from the spinach and lettuce into the salad bowl too. As I pick the radishes, I’ve been putting new seeds in to replace what I’ve taken. It looks like I’ll have some peas to eat soon too, although I’ve had to replant most of them. They didn’t seem to survive the snow storms too well.

Peas

BACKYARD GARDEN

The backyard raised beds receive partial sun, and have been good for planting lettuce and Swiss Chard. Strange things are happening with the chard this year. Two of the three plants that survived the winter are doing great, but one plant seems to be withering and dying. I plan to pull it out this weekend in case it’s diseased. Thankfully the new chard I planted is starting to come in, and I will have replacements for the dying plant.

Swiss Chard

I also have a big bush of parsley in one of the beds. When I got the seeds, I remember the lady saying, “You don’t need a lot of parsley…”. And now I know why. From just a few seeds, we have way more than we can eat!

Advertisement