When I say a garden, I mean a garden! For us this year, a garden is a big 30’x80′ area of manufactured dirt. If you live in East Tennessee, you know that our “dirt” is really good ole red clay. And rocks. Lots of rocks. Did I mention we had a lot of rocks? Big ones, little ones, pieces of shale that split when you try to pick it up or get it out of the red clay. We had a pitiful excuse for a garden last year which was about 5’x30′, but since we didn’t get anything into the ground until about June, it did nothing to speak of. So, we were determined to make it bigger, create good dirt and get things planted early. Bigger? Why did last year’s dismal display of gardening effort mean make it bigger? You will have to ask the Hubs. That was his solution.
So, I killed the grass to make it bigger and then we plowed it and started getting the rocks out. We have filled the RT bed up at least 7 times with rocks. We still have rocks in there and we just pick them as we plant and harvest. We had some great help back in October from a great kid (here is your shout out, Cameron) getting rocks out too. We then added 8 bags of peat moss and 10 bags of cow manure. The peat moss helps break up the clay and add and hold moisture, while the cow manure fertilizes and breaks up the clay to make great dirt! We let that do its thing over winter. The first part of March we added a dump truck load (literally a dump truck load) of mushroom compost and then tilled that in to mix it all together and get our rows. With the tilling, we had more rocks come up, so there was more rocks to get out. We had great dirt to work with come the latter part of March. See what I mean when I said we had to manufacture it? A true labor of love.
The first plants to go in were strawberry and rhubarb, the lettuces (Bib, Romaine and Red leaf), Kale (not sure why we have so much Kale since the only thing I have done with it that has been good is baking it for Kale “chips” b/k/a crispy pieces of Kale), Swiss Chard, spinach and broccoli. We only have one Rhubarb starter, but we planted a bunch of Rhubarb bulbs last year, but haven’t seen hide nor hair of them yet this year. But probably wouldn’t anyway until late May or even June, so we shall wait and see. We put in 4 Strawberry plants and we have 9 of each of the lettuces and Spinach, 9 of each of Kale and Swiss Chard and 9 broccoli. Once we got those in, we fenced it since we have rabbits that can get into the yard and we have 3 doggies that would love to get in and have a salad. Then came our trip to Iceland, so we left the garden alone until we got back. Once we got back, we made up for lost time, for sure! That means we went crazy getting veggie plants to put in this massive garden.
We now have Tomatoes (holy moly we have Tomatoes, as in 20 plants), Eggplant, Zucchini, yellow straight neck Squash, Bell Pepper, Banana Pepper, Cucumbers, Cantaloupe and Watermelon. We were able to split some of the starter plans into at least two plants, which means you get two for one! Normally you will have at least two to four plants in the starters, so go ahead and split ’em up! They are not the marriage kind and they really are happy being single. We planted the Cucumbers down by the fence that is around the garden so we would have a built-in climbing wall for them once they are ready. We also have some Asparagus that we planted as bulbs last year and had no idea if it would come up. Well, it did. But since this was really only the first year it came up, we have let all but a few thicker stalks go ahead and sprout and fern. It is pretty cool to see Asparagus grow if you have never witnessed it as I had not (It can grow 6-9 inches in a day). I admit it, I actually had to look it up to make sure I knew what to look for, but it actually just grows as a stalk and is amazingly obvious. Hey, no judging or rolling of the eyes and certainly no tsk tsking. I had no idea if it was a bush, a stalk, if it grew up out of the ground or was like a peanut and stayed down in there. Anyway, we are letting them fern out so that it makes the roots and the plant itself stronger for next year. Apparently, my great-grandfather had Asparagus and he didn’t harvest for 7 years! Not waiting 7 years. We will see what happens next year and go from there. Just really excited anything came up at all! Now, if we can just get that pesky Rhubarb to flourish. The picture on the left is obviously a lovely stalk of Asparagus which is a bit thin to harvest and the picture on the right is the ferning of the stalks. You usually don’t want to harvest any unless they are at least as thick as a pencil…you know, the graphite ones, not the mechanical ones.
I have been able to harvest lettuce, Swiss Chard and Spinach! The first harvest was small but today’s harvest was crazy! At least 3 heads of lettuce in total. No, I don’t take the whole head at once. I harvest the outside leaves on all the plants. Since lettuce grows from the inside out, the outside leaves are the oldest and the ones you take. If I am being too elementary on all of this, feel free to skip to my Lou and go to the end. You can also see my first Basil harvest!
The first picture below is of the lettuces from today. That is one layer of three in that batch and I had two of these with a total of 6 layers of lettuces and the next one is the Swiss Chard. These have really taken off! It’s a really good thing I like salad. And lettuce. I like to sauté the Swiss Chard with a boatload of garlic and some olive oil and it is tasty! Not really possible to do this with the Kale unless you want to cook it for hours and hours and hours. Or so I’m told. Can you tell I have not really ever eaten Kale? Probably the reason I haven’t actually harvested any Kale.
This is what the lettuces looked like after I harvested. You can tell I could have taken more, but you don’t want to take too much too early or it can kill the plant. Happy plants mean a happy harvest!
We will also be adding some Butternut Squash, Sweet Potatoes and carrots this year. I will be putting in carrot seeds and will hopefully get those in tomorrow as I can’t wait too much longer or I will miss my chance. Oh and on the subject of manufacturing dirt (remember the whole first part of this post?), we did add some additional compost and manure around the tomato plants last weekend just for good measure. Next year we will be able to use the compost that is gettin’ all good outside the fence from the chickens and maybe from our worm farm. Yes, I said worm farm. But that is a whole other post. Well, probably not an entire post. I would say a couple of paragraphs in a post about compost. If I ever do any entire post on compost. Wonder if people would actually read an entire post on compost? It IS an interesting subject…but I digress.
I will keep you posted (ha, get it?) on the garden’s production and harvests including of course, the herbs.
That’s all folks! Well, at least for today.
This is awesome. Wish I lived close to you guys, I would totally come help. Happy farming! !