First Planting of the Year - Onions and Carrots

After finding the shower attachment for the hose broke from last year, I had to wait a couple of days before I could get another attachment and water the beds before doing any major planting. While it's still too cold even in the tent for tomatoes (hopefully I can plant in another week if the weather warms up a bit) I was able to start my onion sets and carrots. I purchased a couple onion sets from a local store and ended up having a ton more onions than I expected. I should have laid them all out before putting in the carrot seeds, but I managed to fill a spot in the her bed and a small row in one of the other beds with the leftover onions. I also planted kaleidoscope carrots this year. Last year I planted nantes, denvers, and minicors, but I couldn't remember where I planted the minicors and ended up having finger carrots the entire summer. This year, I kept it easy and just did the kaleidoscopes - an easy way to plant a bunch of different kinds without having to wonder when to pick them. Also a bonus, the stores and markets in my area don't sell them to this will be the first in trying Atomic Reds and Purple Passions. 

The green beans were planted, and i ended up getting the Kentucky beans, only because all of the tri-colored beans I planned on planting were bush beans. I had found in my research that bush beans grow and produce usually one crop, whereas the pole beans produce much longer. For the amount of space i have for them to grow, I wanted to make sure I had a prolonged crop as opposed to one big crop. It certainly wasn't what I had planned on, but I hadn't planned out my seed purchasing well enough and purchased some seeds on the impulse instead of waiting for them to arrive via snail mail. I ended up getting three rows of them along the trellis, and last year not every bean sprouted, so while it may be pretty compact to grow them like that, I wanted to be safe to make sure I had a heavy growth. Worst case scenario, I thin them later on.

Also to report: planted the cucumber plants. I'm growing a super crunch variety that says on the package prolific crops. Prolific sounds like a good key term. Honestly I bought that package because of the word prolific. We'll see how that goes.

The squash plants are growing like crazy in my hydroponics room and I'm wondering if I bought Jack and the Beanstalk magic beans. Black Krims bloomed and so did the tomatillos, and not to mention the near 2ft high beefsteaks I now have that I planted a few blog posts ago. 

I was disappointed to find out today that lavender takes 2 years before getting a big crop. A couple sources online suggested winter sowing to get a good crop in the spring. Sounds interesting, I'll have to see what exactly winter sowing is. 

Lastly, I ended up planting a broccoli plant someone bought me. I've never tried growing broccoli because it just seems the way we eat it and how cheap it is in my local mart, it doesn't pay to take up the space in my garden. Since it's a cool weather plant, I'm assuming I will only get a main crop and maybe a secondary crop if I'm lucky before it will get plucked. In place of the broccoli I will be planting a tomato plant, which, technically you're not supposed to grow the two together, but after some research there's been several reports of broccoli and tomatoes living in harmony. One plant won't hurt, right? 

Coming up:

Working on getting a home-made composter set up | Prepping the garden with cotton twine | Getting the strawberry gutter up and running | lots more fun stuff