April 9, 2014 - A Late Start

The 2013-2014 winter was the second snowiest on record - a total of 67.4" fell in the Philadelphia area and I suspect that is on the low side for Downingtown. All that snow is now gone and Spring is here. Unfortunately, because the winter weather continued late into March, I am behind schedule this year getting the garden cleaned up. It was VERY swampy until this past weekend but after spending the first warm weekend out doors it is now ready to go.

While cleaning up I noticed there were some onion-looking things sprouting in suspiciously neat rows.  I think these may be the leftover ramps from last years market.  I wonder if they multiplied?

Here is the tentative plan for this year:
8 Tomatoes
9 Peppers
2-4 Cucumbers
3 Eggplant
1 Zucchini
1 Yellow Squash
And a rotating crop of salad greens

I'm trying my hand at successive plantings this year of some of salad greens.  It's always something that I intend on doing but this year I'm planting 5 Watermelon Daikon Radishes and 5 Merlot Lettuce seeds every weekend for a month - the first set went in on April 5th.  As soon as I get some spinach seeds I'll work them into the mix too.

The biggest experiment this years is a new setup I have for starting seeds. I'll add another post detailing the setup, but I have 18 Polvarini Tomatoes, 18 Green Zebra Tomatoes, 3 Rosa Blanco Eggplant, 18 Grenada Seasoning Peppers, 6 Golden Bell Peppers, and 6 Yellow Bell Peppers - all of which are doing well.   The biggest lesson so far has been how slow the peppers grow.  I really should have started them 2-4 weeks earlier I think.

March 20, 2013 - Reboot for the First Spring Day

Today is the first day of Spring 2013 and so I felt it was a good time to reboot the garden blog. Here are a couple of highlights since I last posted:

I last posted in July last year. Since then we have moved to Downingtown, Pennsylvania which geographically is not too far from the old barn but worlds apart in terms of  gardening conditions. Compared to the barn we are now in a much more urban environment and being more urban it will in some ways be more challenging: less sun, poor dirt, new animal pests, and others I'm sure I'll run into soon enough - not to mention a new dog roaming the back yard.

Our new back yard is modest but more than sufficient to set up a large vegetable garden.  It is about 2,500 square feet fenced in yard with a large pine tree in the northeast corner. Other than that there is no landscaping to speak of out back - a blank pallet to build on. The vegetable garden this time around will not be a row in the field away from the house, but instead it will be integrated into the larger landscape design.  This larger plan will be executed over the course of a few years, but immediately the focus is getting raised beds in place that can support this summer's garden needs.

In anticipation of the garden last fall I constructed a compost bin made of shipping pallets.  I was able to acquire several pallets from work and improvised a crude but effective compost bin.  It has a base, three walls, and a hinged door.  During this past fall there was plenty of leaves and grass clippings around.  I had the foresight to throw together the bin with the hope I'd have some quality compost for the spring. Turns out it didn't cook enough and the winter was too cold.  But I have hopes that while it may not be ready for my first plantings it will be for the summer.

More recently I read many website on how to build raised beds and eventually sketched up a plan that fit our space. I went with two 4'x12' beds mad using 2"x12"lumber. As of today I have finished one of the beds and I hope to be able to complete the second and get it in place this weekend. once completed I will post the details on the bed and the steps I took to build it.  I hope someone finds it useful.

I also visited the local Penn State Agricultural Cooperative in West Chester to do a proper soil analysis.  It was only $9 and after a week's wait today I got the results.  The soil where I'm planting superficially looked surprisingly good. Once I go over the results of its chemistry and figure out what I need to do I'll post the details.