Garden report - The season begins

I prepared the carrot and pea bed today. I'll plant snap and shelling peas tomorrow. Also sweet peas along our compost corner fence, trying to provide a screen for our neighbors to hide the sometimes unsightly compost pile.

I feel a little like I'm scrambling to catch up. I've devoted a fair amount of my free time this past month to updating my blog and gardening plans have laid as dormant as the snow covered beds. But with these warming days of spring my attentions are turned to planning the larger vegetable garden I'm growing this year.

One piece of garden planning puzzle is the raised cedar bed we ordered from Natural Yards. I've been planning my other vegetable garden spaces around that, trying to position everything to get the most sun as needed for each crop. I've been scratching diagrams, measuring square feet in my backyard, and poring over seed catalogs every spare minute. These are all things I probably should of done a couple months ago. But the realities are:

  • I couldn't easily walk or measure in my yard even one week ago.
  • I'm not starting seedlings and those are the seeds that you really need to plan in advance for.
  • I can't take advantage of any early seed orders and early planting, other than the standard peas, until I have this new raised bed established in my yard.
This new bed will allow us to extend our growing season, hopefully a month each way, with hoops and plastic to create a greenhouse like effect for growing early & late season green crops (spinach, lettuce, kale etc). But none of that good stuff can happen until the bed is built and we have to wait till the ground is completely thawed for that.

So, what does this all mean? Although it's a late start the only thing I've really missed out on is early bird discounts on seed orders. This week's plan is to plant peas, determine more of the garden's what and where, place the orders for mailorder seeds and by next week, at the latest, make a trip to Pinetree Garden Seeds in nearby New Gloucester. Then a little rest for early May and then the steam train of spring gardening will begin in earnest.

Filed Under

« Spring's firsts
Lots to Gardens greenhouse planting »
  • Spring Gouette

    Spring Gouette on April 9, 2008, 3:57 p.m.

    I am INSANELY jealous... most of my garden is still under several inches of snow! And Half of my perennial bed is starting to peek out of the snow.

    reply

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