Today I began my first planting of the spring. If you recall all the work I put in during the fall to prepare these beds, you’ll know how excited I have been about today for a long time!
Keep in mind that my sharing my gardening journey is a big risk because most of these crops I’ve never grown before. I’m going strictly on the 2 books, 5 ebooks, and Internet articles I’ve been reading virtually all winter. Finally getting down and dirty is quite a different experience than reading about it!
First, I started with potatoes. I hadn’t planned on putting the potatoes where I did, but because of drainage issues I decided to place the potatoes in two different spots in the garden. One was the garden I covered with pine needles last fall, and the other was the plot that I had covered with wood chips. I decided to plant all three varieties of potatoes that I’m growing (Yukon Gold, Lasoda Red, and Kennebec White) in both places. That way I can see if there is a difference in the growth depending on which soil it was grown in.
You can tell in the two photos (the one above was the pine needle garden; the one below was the wood chip garden) the difference in the soil. The wood chip garden was much, much richer, but it was also more waterlogged. That could have been because of the location. I’m a little worried about the wood chip garden with potatoes because the wood chips haven’t completely broken down yet. As organic matter breaks down, it uses nitrogen, a key element needed in forming potatoes. So we’ll see.
My next plot was for my onions: red, yellow, and white. It was hard to find good info on growing onions, so we’ll see how they do. I plan on planting more onions but I want to see how they do in this first planting. I planted these in the pine needle garden.
Finally, I planted cabbage transplants, spinach seeds, and carrot seeds in my new raised bed. I chose these because all of the soil is new and pH neutral, which these plants need (the rest of my soil is acidic). I also plan for the cabbage and spinach to be done sometime in May, just in time for me to pull them up and plant some of my summer crops. Hopefully it will work out to plant tomatoes here next to the carrots because carrots are said to be beneficial grown next to tomatoes.
My next planting will probably be in a week or two. I hope to plant broccoli, lettuce, and more onions and carrots.