Somehow I am always behind on the season, but this year that was not so very bad. We have had some nice weather early in the year, but May stayed cold for a long time. Normally the middle of May is the time to start planting everything (even tomatoes etc.) outside. This year the second half of May was still very windy and chilly. The temperature at night still dropped to just above freezing, which is not very favorable for small seedlings raised in a greenhouse. What went completely past me (due to the low temperatures and the harsh winds) is that it did not rain since middle of April, but more to that later.
Around middle of May I transferred my Tomato and pepper seedlings to the greenhouse. I did not trust to do so sooner, because the greenhouse is not completely closed and it also cools down at night. The tomato seedlings where becoming so big that thy really needed to be potted and so I did, with the help of my children, who prepared the little planting pots with soil for me, this went quickly.
With all of the tomatoes and peppers in there own pots the greenhouse was very full and I was anxious to start planting my so many seedlings outdoors.
The second half of May we noticed our fruit trees, we planted last year, are suffering and I realized that the soil was so very dry. We started watering our gardens, which takes us a lot of time, so planting seedlings has been postponed.
By the time the end of May came it was not warm, but hot and the sun was burning terribly. I started planting my seedlings. I did not really have a plan as to where to plant which crops, but I did pay attention to curtain things as I went along with planting (for instant, need of nutrients, best neighbors, etc.). I had the feeling I was much too late with planting, so I planted as I had time. I did not properly prepare and did not harden the plants on forehand.
I started in our garden 2, the one with the raised beds, with some corn. I have some different types of corn, the normal sweet corn, one for flower, one for popcorn and one for polenta. I divided the different types apart from each other over the different gardens we have. My husband had dig in the straw mulch in one raised bed last fall and we hat green manure growing there over winter. Corn needs a lot of nutrients, so I decided to plant the corn in this bed. We mulched with a thick layer of straw.
Next thing up for planting where different kind of turnips. My husband even made a short video about this. There is not much to planting actually. Loosening the soil, making a hole, putting water in the hole, putting the seedling in, pushing back the soil and tuck in the mulch around the plants.
The important thing with planting is to pay attention to the planting dept. Some plants must not be planted to deep others win by being planted deeper. Like cabbage should not be planted to deep, so they can form a nice head without trapping soil inside. Tomatoes on the other hand benefit from being planted as deep as they have there seed leaves. They make extra roots on the piece of stem that will be covered with soil this way. They stand more stable and take in more nutrients.
Next thing up where the cabbages I have red and white once and they where outgrowing there seedling stage. I had bad experience with the cabbages last year, since the soil in the raised beds is lacking nutrients and cabbages need a lot. With the tomatoes growing under the greenhouse roof we had last year, I noticed a curling of there leafs. This can mean that there are too many nutrients in the soil. So that should be an ideal spot for planting cabbages, if it was not so very weedy and the soil so extremely compacted. So first things first. My husband came with the tractor and the rotary tiller and made this unusable growing area to a splendid growing area.
The rotary tiller divided the area into two beds and after a thorough watering we spread a thick layer of straw mulch over the beds, just like we did with the last bed in the article about the couch grass.
I was experiencing some tiredness, but happily started planting the first bed with the cabbages. After that was done I was not feeling very well and had to get my husband to help with the further planting. He finished planting the cabbages in the second bed.
There are a few left which will get a home some where else in the garden. After doing some research I decided the root celery is going in between the cabbages.
They should profit from one another. So far for keeping planting distances, since I did not encounter planting something else in between the cabbages, but will see what happens.
By this time it completely hit me. A terrible “morning” sickness that lasted from the moment I opened my eyes until I fell a sleep again at night coming along with this extreme exhaustment that prohibit me from doing hardly anything. Well if you haven’t guessed jet, we are expecting our 4th child and pregnancy is coming hard on at that moment. I have handed the gardening to my husband and children completely, which is hard on me since I love it so much. All I did was telling what I wanted planted where and did some documenting.
Coming back to not noticing the lack of rain since April, I was noticing that from the over 50 meters of carrots I had sown (we love carrots) there where only about 15 cm where carrots had sprouted. This was very disappointing, but made place for all of the way to many tomato and pepper plants I had started indoors. Tomatoes and peppers like to stand along with garlic and onions, so everywhere where the carrots did not sprout there are tomatoes and peppers now. Since the soil in the raised beds is so very poor my husband worked in some manure and, partly composted, wood chips everywhere he was going to plant, even in between the onions and the garlic.
A thick layer of straw as mulch and we slowly started to progress with all of the planting we had to do. In the mean time we are half way trough the first half of June and where able to harvest our first strawberries. We even had a big one. Most of the strawberries we harvest are small, but that is because they also lack nutrients in the soil. That is something we will fix in the fall.
Middle of June we also planted a raised bed with cucumbers and basil, since nothing I sowed sprouted in this bed either.
Beside all of the watering we had to do, which takes so much time, we made a nice progress with the planting.
What we have noticed while planting in the different raised beds is that the beds where we grew potatoes in last year the soil was noticeably better than in the other beds. The soil had a much darker color and there where more earthworms in the soil. Potatoes are a good first crop to work the soil on hand.
As I mentioned I did not harden the plants before planting and they where planted while the sun was burning from the sky. The result where sunburn and partly dying off of the existing leafs, but most of the plants recovered very nicely and are growing strong now.
We where very happy with some cloudy days, but we had to wait until the 16th of June to receive a good amount of rain. Since then we are very happy to have cloudy days, some rain and sunny warm days in change.
I almost forgot. We also did some weeding in between, but not too much. Is that a bad thing when getting such nice flowers?
The planting in the other gardens will become there own article, so stay tuned for that.
Beautiful Chaos 