Monday, March 14, 2011

Spring Garden 2011 Second Planting

I decided a few weeks ago to take advantage of the early spring weather and transitioned my first fall garden box to spring/summer vegetable plants.


The green beans in the first box are growing well.  One of them is tipped over - I think from the squirrels but its still growing.



The peppers and new collard green plants seem to have adapted to the box.


The cucumber transplant didn’t do as well.  It never gained any strength so we pulled it out this weekend.


To prepare the second box it meant that it was time to take out the collard greens.  They were growing back in pretty quickly after being trimmed back last week.

That was a sad decision for me. Since my cucumbers and grape tomatoes last summer the collards were the most successful plant I’d grown.   I was ready to get the squash seeds in the ground though so that meant out the collards had to come.


After I had pulled out the collards, I used my hand trowel to rake through any old roots in the box.  Then I added two more bags of garden soil and smoothed it out so that the drip hoses were covered.  Leaves of squash are very susceptible to mildew so it is important to keep them dry when watering.


Then came seed planting time.


One seed packed said to plant 3 seeds and another said 5 so I compromised at 4.  One packet said the pants will need to be thinned out so if figure this gives me the option to thin them if they all sprout but it also give me a back up incase the squirrels find them or, like in the case of the green beans and carrots, some of the seeds don’t sprout. 

As for the 2 healthy looking carrot tops



I dug around the tops but all I found were very long roots and no carrots.  I’m not really sure what went wrong with the carrots but I’ll give them a try again next fall.

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