April and May 2008 in my Vegetable Garden

Spring is my favorite season, maybe because I can get back into the garden after a long absence due to winter. I normally plant lettuce quite early, but can't remember when I got my first plants in last year. I wasn't blogging, and didn't write it down.

The first three pics were taken April 22. I planted 3 kinds of onions. I prefer plants over bulbs because the onions get bigger and they don't try to flower. I tend to plant them fairly close, thinking I'm going to thin some to use for green onions. I don't get them thinned as much as I'd planned, and the onions don't get as big as they could, so I tried to give them more room last year.

It's good to keep onions and lettuce from drying out as they are growing. By the time the skins are forming on the onions, the lettuces are all out of the garden, and the onions should be kept on the dry side. Onions can be picked and used at any size all season.



I got some fabric that is for putting on grass seeds or garden plants because it was getting below freezing at night. I had just taken it off the lettuce in this pic, and put it on the peas coming up, to protect them from the rabbits, who normally eat them down to the ground. It worked! I start thinning lettuce by pulling plants out when this size, pulling the roots off, and eating what I've thinned.




There was some lettuce with the peas, too.


May 6, those are hollyhocks growing next to the compost pile, behind the lattice.




Still May 6, the hole on the left is where a holly hock I gave away had been. The violets I let grow and eat are in the middle, next to the "lovely" brick and spigot we used to be able to get water from. I think that flower on the upper right was a false sunflower that I later moved. There is a little volunteer bachelor button in the middle of the bottom.



May 12, look at all those onions!



May 15, from the flower bed in front, that I need to work on this year. I think that blue flower is a comfrey, that I could have put in a GBBD post if I was blogging then.



May 19, the buttercrunch and romaine were forming nicely. I didn't do as good a job of succession planting as usual, so had trouble keeping up with my thinning. The rabbits didn't mind.



May 19, the lamb's ears looked happy, but I dug most of it up to give away. There are a few pea plants in the right side of the picture.



May 22, everything was growing, and you can see garlic in the upper left side of the pic.



May 25, the garlic was thinned and put on the compost pile.


I planted lettuce between the onions and garlic. This was taken May 25, I think, after I thinned.



May 25, from the garlic area:



May 28, there is a potato plant on the upper left, and the row of kale was coming up on the left, too. The bachelor button on the far right was growing well.



May 28, from the entrance to the garden. The vine is perennial sweet pea.


Soon, soon, I will plant what I call my "gamble garden". This is the only gambling I do. The plants won't come up until the soil is warm enough, and then, like last year, there will be some below freezing nights. If I don't get a cold frame, I will use the green cloth again, and if I loose some of the crop, the plants I put in later will be coming along.

Happy Almost Spring!