The rhubarb, chives, marsh marigolds, and crocuses
have poked their heads out, and the blueberry buds have swelled and
beach grass is coming up. Hopefully the plants haven't called spring too
soon. Though it is only 20-30 degrees out, it feels so warm since it's
actually dry out.
My
garden map for the year is filled out in pencil with plans of what to
plant where. I completely geek out with the garden map and make it to
scale on grid paper and color code things. This is the third year I've made a map, and
this year I'm stepping my record keeping up with an extra database to
make tracking crop rotation easier. I made rock number labels for each raised
bed. Now I can simply look in my database and see that bed #1 had kale,
then lettuce, then peas in it. Crop rotation is important for both
nutrient and pest management.
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| I have 46 raised beds, with more on the way! |
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| Basil |
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Kale
|
I started a few flats indoors. I can't figure out how
to prevent legginess.....I have my lights within centimeters of the
lights but they all just want to reach up, up up......do I just not move
the lights when the plants touch them? I wish I had more room to
experiment with starts!
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| Potential Peas |
I planted a packet
of peas under row cover, in a hoop house, outdoors on March 12, and of course the temps
immediately dropped to 20 degrees. Peas will sprout and grow in
surprisingly low temperatures, but 20 is pushing it. People always
wonder how I can plant so early and make it work. #1 is having dry,
covered beds that warm up on sunny days. #2 is that many times many
things don't work! It's a gamble to plant early, but at $2.50 a seed
packet, it's not really risking much if something doesn't sprout. I
stick to peas, onions, kale, spinach and lettuce for super early crops.
If something doesn't sprout early you can always replant. If seeds
haven't come up in a couple of weeks it's usually safe to say it's a
bust--don't wait and wait and wait to replant just because you know the
seeds are there. Now if the snow that just started falling would stop, I'd say "Get planting!"
