The only seed sowing I've begun so far is my onion seeds. I started these back in February:
Bronze D'Amposta red onions (ordered from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds)
Sweet Spanish (Ferry Morse, purchased at local garden center)
Red Burgundy (Ferry Morse, purchased at local garden center)
Hybrid Granex Yellow (Ferry Morse, purchased at local garden center)
I planted 5 of each seed. I got a good germination rate from the Baker Creek seeds-- 3 out of 5 germinated. I'm most excited to try these onions. They're described as "sweet...A great variety for fresh eating, as it is not too hot tasting." I think that means I won't repel my husband when I move in for a kiss.
Germination rates:
1 Sweet Spanish onion germinated, 3 out 5 Red Burgundy onions germinated, and only 1 of that wacky hybrid one germinated, but it promptly shriveled and died. Hybrids!
I think red onions are so pretty and I hope that my red onions seedlings pull through.
I mentioned weeding out my onion patch in my last post. I planted this onion patch in Fall 2011, and last summer harvested about 2 pounds of onions. I left the others in the ground (show in picture above) and they survived the winter. It smelled really good when I was weeding last weekend!
Sadly, I cannot remember what variety they are!! That really bugs me because I'd love to grow more of them. They are mild and slightly sweet, and the flavor is very concentrated. A little bit goes a long way when I'm cooking and they're OK when eaten raw.
I also have a small garlic patch, which happened by accident. I call this variety Farmers' Market garlic because I bought a head of garlic at the farmers' market last fall, put in it in the ceramic garlic house when I got home, and forgot all about it. A couple of weeks later I went to use it, and the cloves had sprouted little stems. So I broke them apart and planted them in my raised bed out back.
We had a beautiful sunny weekend in DC. I'm sure everyone who was in town for the Cherry Blossom Festival appreciated it too. Just to remind myself of how time passes, exactly one month ago, on March 6, it snowed!
On this sunny weekend I had the windows open in my house each day. It felt so good to have fresh air circulating through the house. The rest of my April weekends will be busy with out of town travel, a crawfish boil, birthday parties, and a going-away party, so I took advantage of the nice weather to get some yard work done on my free weekend.
First, I started some sunflower seeds. (I am so woefully behind on seed starting in general. I only have some onion seedlings sprouting from seeds I started a couple of months ago). I'm determined not to let the squirrels dig up my sunflower seedlings this year. We'll see who wins that war. I'm growing Teddy Bear sunflowers, Mammoth sunflowers, and Chianti sunflowers.
These are my Queen of the Night tulips. They're growing more every day and I can't wait to see those lovely dark purple blooms. I planted some peach colored alyssum seeds in the spaces between the tulips. I think the color combo of peach and dark purple will look nice.
My big garden task was weed work. Look at how these weeds have almost taken over my onion patch. Now imagine all of that on a 10x10 space. That's about the size of my backyard and it's all full of weeds. It's going to take a while to weed everything.
But for now I managed to liberate my onion patch. This was a lesson learned for me. I will mulch better and/or plant some cover crops next fall to prevent this from happening again.
I also squeezed some shopping in this weekend. I treated myself to these cute pink shorts. I don't think I've ever owned pink shorts in my life. I must have spring fever. I can't wait for the weather to warm up enough to wear them.
Just as I've done the last couple of years, I'm recapping the best and worst of my garden for the year. Inspired by all the year-end "best and worst" lists on TV, movies, music, fashion, etc., this list helps remind me what I did right and what went wrong over the year.
Best -- Basil! In the past I've always had small basil plants, some of which didn't make it through the summer. But this year I was able to grow 3 healthy bunches. I ate many tomato-basil-mozzarella salads, had plenty of basil to throw into sauces, and I even managed to pick enough to store some basil pesto cubes in the freezer. These basil plants were in a very deep container, planted along side this Mortgage Lifter tomato plant, which brings me to...
Best/Worst -- Tomatoes. I tried some new varieties this year, some of which did OK, like the ground cherries, Pink Girl hybrids and pink Brandywines...
But others like Chocolate Cherries, Mortgage Lifter, Mr. Stripey, and Ace 55 hybrid didn't do well. I documented my Mortgage Lifter troubles extensively so I won't go into that again. I was talking to a couple of friends who had tomato troubles this year. One lives in the south, but another lives here in the DC area. I'm not sure why we weren't able to get good tomato harvests. For me, I think it was a combination of the heat, which can prevent tomato plants from flowering and setting fruit, and lack of pollinators. I didn't have many flowers in my garden this year to attract pollinators. I also had issues with garden pests, like aphids, spider mites, and horn worms.
Best -- Return of the pond frog! I'm actually not sure if he/she is the same one from last year or even 3 years ago. I read that frogs are a sign of a healthy pond, so I was really happy to see this little frog in my back yard this year.
Worst -- That stupid $$%@ squirrel. It was responsible for eating the few tomatoes that did grow, blueberries, corn stalks, and for digging up many of my seeds and transplants. I love sunflowers (hence the blog title picture), but I only had one grow this year because the squirrel dug up all my transplants.(Another Worst -- no sunflowers this year). I'll have to protect them better next year. Now that the temperatures are bitterly cold, I feel sorry for the little guy (and yes, I know it's the same one. I recognize the mangy brown fur). I may or may not have felt bad enough to throw some unsalted almonds near a tree where I saw it lurking. I know he's thinking "Sucker!"
Best -- I had a pretty good onion harvest this year--just over 2 pounds, not bad for the second year growing them. We left a few in the ground to see if they grow bigger.
Worst - lots of garden fails this year. Beetles ate the potatoes, the two green bean varieties I planted in containers didn't really take off. Everyone seems to be able to grow squash and zucchini so well that they can't give it away, but squash bugs and cucumber beetles feasted on ours. The two little watermelons that we harvested were smelly and didn't taste well.
Although I had some disappointments, I have ideas for what to do better next year. I haven't begun serious garden planning yet, but I've been thinking about growing fewer tomato varieties, for example, and just sticking with a few that I've grown in the past and that did well in pots on my deck. I have to have sunflowers next year, I missed them a lot this past summer. I think my vegetables missed the pollinators they attract. I'll have to make sure to protect the seeds and transplants so they don't get yanked out before their time.
Last but not least, Best -- You! I love reading about your garden plans,and especially like seeing what gardens look like in other parts of the country or world. Thank you for visiting my blog and leaving words of encouragement, advice, or sympathy. It makes all this a lot more fun!
If you'd like to recap your own Best and Worst, please feel free to link up or leave a comment below.
Whenever I'm puttering around the house or garden, I always think of something interesting I want to write on the blog. Then I get to the blank page and I forget everything. My garden posts lately seem boring--they're either rants about what's going wrong or a boring description of what I'm harvesting or growing. When I sat down to write this post last night, I forgot about all the garden happenings I wanted to write about, and all I could think about was how good the wine was that I was drinking. And how there are still two tacos from Chipotle in the fridge and I wondered if I could just scrape off the huge glob of guacamole and eat that while leaving the tacos behind.
So, I thought our squash plants were completely dead, but one of them surprised us. We harvested this one last juicy zucchini from a plant in the raised bed. It weighs 12 ounces--almost a whole pound! And that big red tomato is the one and only Mortgage Lifter. I'm anxious to taste it. I sprayed an Epsom salt and water mixture to the ML plants to see if they get a late season boost. Will keep you posted...
Other news--our 2 pound onion harvest! There are still 4 or 5 in the ground and I may leave them there just to see what happens. Hopefully they'll flower and attract some pollinators. I've only seen pictures of onion flowers, so I'd love to have some in my garden. It smells so good and onion-y in the little patch where they're growing. And garden pests have pretty much left them alone, which is very nice.
Our corn stalk seems to be doing really well. If you remember, we'd purchased 8 little sweet corn plants to make use of the raised bed after the potatoes died, but 7 of them got picked off one by one by the Evil Squirrel. The one corn stalk left seems to have produced two ears, which you can sort of see. (clicking on the pic will take you to my flickr page where I tried to tag the ears). I've never grown corn before and am just really excited to see the plant actually growing. I can't wait to harvest and taste it.
Last of all, the strawberry patch is coming back, just as it did last year. The buds aren't as big as they were in early spring, and I'm not sure if we'll be able to harvest much. (Looking at this picture, I can see that the patch really needs to be weeded!) But it's nice to see these little berries coming back for the end of summer.
That's what's happening in my garden. What's going on in yours?
