As Soon As the Ground Can Be Worked
Spencer and I took advantage of the beautiful weather and our long weekend to get started in the vegetable garden.
Although I like the idea of raised beds, the initial investment is more than I care to afford right now. We mimicked the efficient design by sinking 2 x 4’s about halfway into the ground to mark out the 4′ x 12′ beds. There is a 4′ walkway down the middle of the garden and 2′ walkways separating the beds. Hopefully this design will help me stay on top of weeding and keep the soil loose for successful root crops.
On Saturday I planted…
- Garlic: Too late, I know. Garlic is supposed to be planted in the fall so I will probably not get big bulbs this season. My concern was that the garlic I had would rot by the fall. This way I will at least have cloves for planting it the right way this year.
- Allium: Also supposed to be planted in fall. My bulbs were left in the garage over the winter, so I hope they had enough of a dormant period. I planted them in star-shaped groups of five among my perennials.
- Beets: Two seeds every 2″
- Tom Thumb lettuce: 2 ish seeds every 6″
- Mom’s lettuce: I’m not sure what kind of lettuce this will be. I stole a bunch from my Mom’s lettuce that had gone to seed and never labeled the bucket.
- Spinach: 2 seeds every 6″
- Potatoes: 1 “eye” every 6″ ish
- Peas: 2″ apart in 3 sets of two long rows 6″ apart. I will put some sort of trellis between each pair of rows, but am not sure what I want to do yet
Some thrifty tips we encountered along the way…
- For plant markers I am using vinyl blinds which I purchased at Goodwill for $2.88. If I were doing full-on square food gardening these would come in handy for marking my grid as well.
- The 2 x 4’s were pulled from our basement. We recently tore out all of the walls in our basement to get rid of water damage and to make way for waterproofing efforts. When Spencer took the rotten wood to the dump he found even more 2 x 4’s to use for beds.
It is taking a lot of restraint from planting all of my seeds RIGHT NOW but there is only so much lettuce a girl can eat. I will do my darndest to plant every couple of weeks to space out the bounty a bit.