Spring Garden Notes - April 4, 2016

The main vegetable garden is completely planted now -- so now it's down to weeding, watering and waiting!  Here's what I've put in Bed #4:

• Pension Green Beans - Johnny's Select Seeds
• Purple Bush Beans - Burpee
• Calima Beans - Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

The Calima beans are my go-to green bush bean every single year - I've grown them for 4 years straight and will continue as long as I can get them. They are the most beautifully straight, stringless beans I've ever grown.  Reliable, and I highly recommend them.

This year I'm trying Hybrid Butternut Winter Squash (Metro F1 PMR), recommended by one of the garden/homestead bloggers that I follow, The Walden Effect. I've had sketchy results in the past, so hoping a better variety will help.

And finally four summer squash at the end of the bed:

• Benning's Green Tint - Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
• Round Zucchini - SeedsNow
• Desi Squash - Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
• Butter Dish - Burpee

After the planting was done, John hooked up the automatic water system in this final bed, so now we're completely automatic! yea!

In other news, the Bak Choy is about ready to harvest, and I'm going to start some to fill in the blank spaces once these are gone.  This is a fast growing veggie (not to mention delicious!)

Bak Choy

Among the snow peas, I found a couple of volunteer tomatillo plants - this is the area that they were grown in last year.  I'm going to have to dig them up, but may just move them to a new area and see if they survive.

Little tomatillo plant

The winter squash around the Squash House has sprouted!

Table Dainty squash, breaking ground!

Now that the veggies are done, I'm turning my attention to the annual flowers.  First the morning glory pole.  We grow this every year, and it's been quite a show in the past.  I usually plant Heavenly Blue - a beautiful deep blue that just glows in the yard in the early morning.  This year I'm adding a new pink mix - La Vie en Rose from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.  I managed to get two plants started in the greenhouse, and then planted seeds all around them, saved seeds from our past plants plus the new one.  We'll see how they do.

The greenhouse is empty now - I've moved everything out.  The three tomato plants that were in there all winter are now out by the fence.  They look like they've been shocked - I had to pull some of the branches out from small spaces where they had curled in to.  It won't take long and they will recover and go crazy.  Tomatoes are pretty resilient.

 And finally, the potted garden is greening up nicely!  The only one lagging behind is the big tub of spinach - they're slowly showing up, but not in a big hurry.  Sigh....