Garlic growth update

Here's the garlic raised bed, does't look very different from how it did in the fall.



Upon closer inspection, however, we can see a few garlic buds popping out. Shouldn't be long before they're all out.

Cucumber growth update

I had not been checking the plants regularly and so when it finally occurred to me that I had to check on them, all had sprouted and all had grown quite long, searching for light. They had been in the dark, so they stretched really far. I'm going to stick with them, however, in the hopes that they will still work out. Here they are the day after I put the lights on.

Cucumber seeds planted

The seven that are grouped together on the left side of the larger container are the Green Dragon while the six that are made up of the two to the right and the four others in the small container are the Long Green. There is one seed in each. From each type I will take the three best looking seedlings to plant outdoors at the end of May.

Planning for 2011

So as previously posted there is one bed already planted in garlic. I have two others. The bigger one will be all sweet potato.

The smaller one will be divided into four sections:

------------------------------------------------------
|             |              |     watermelon        |
| parsnips    |    beets     |-----------------------|
|             |              | gr.dr cuc | ln gr cuc |
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The gr.dr cuc is Green Dragon Cucumber while the ln gr cuc are Long Green Cucumber. I have the rough planting schedule as follows:

• April 1 Start Cucumber indoors, start 7 of each type
• April 6 Start watermelon indoors (5 seeds)
• May 10 Start Parsnips indoors (24 seeds)
• May 19 Beets, sow direct outdoors
• May 26 Sweet Potato Slips (plant all)
• May 26 Plant Parsnips outdoors (16 best seedlings)
• May 26 Plant cucumbers (4 of each)
• May 26 Plant watermelon (3 best seedlings)
• July 20 Start spinach indoors (30 seeds)
• July 27 Stop watering garlic
• August 15 harvest garlic
• August 15 plant spinach (plant all)

Note that the spinach planted on August 15th will be going into the garlic bed.

Garlic planting for 2011

So this bed had in it the tomatoes which didn't go anywhere this summer. I've planted the entire bed with garlic cloves that are the product of the garlic I grew from last year. Last year I planted 11 cloves, this fall I planted 21. Before planting the garlic I took some fresh finished compost out of my composter and mixed it into the bed.

Sweet Potato harvest

So I decided to harvest the sweet potatoes today - the nights are getting colder and the one thing sweet pototes don't like is cold. Here is the result of the harvest. Probably I should weigh the lot somehow to take a proper measure of the harvest.



I am going to attempt to grow my own slips for next year, here is my starting piece. Today is day zero of the rooting session.

Sweet potato growth update

On September 5th I took the photos below - the sweet potatoes grew flowers!