Saturday, May 5, 2018

Early May Planting

Early May rolls around, and it's time to put things into the garden. Well, theoretically, Mother's day is that official "no more frost" date, but the forecast is for excellent weather. 

It all goes out this weekend.

This  is the tomato bed. It's tough to see in a photo, but there's a trellis of fencing wire in the middle.
Legend

Behind the trellis are the San Marzano, cooking tomatoes.

In front, in two rows (yeah, probably too densely packed!) are slicing tomatoes: mostly a determinate heirloom variety called Legend (I haven't grown many determinate tomatoes) and three plants of an indeterminate heirloom variety called Brandywine.
Brandywine

Brandywine's can get pretty big. A couple years back, I had a nearly two-pound Brandywine tomato! Brandywine is also the taste test winner. Yummy!

I'm experimenting with planting cucumbers to vine around the base of the tomatoes. We'll see how that works out.

I'm going to have to learn more about pruning determinate tomatoes. 


Then there is the squash bed.

This one's 8' in diameter. Since the middle is tough to reach, we stuck a rosemary plant there, so we don't have to weed that spot.

I've got German / Hokkaido pumpkins, Honey-Nut, Carnival squash, Hubbard squash (all winter squash), and two zucchini and a pattypan (summer squash).

They're not the same, but I had to put the cantaloupes somewhere. So there are two of those here, and two more in a hanging basket. And a couple of peppers as an experiment, to stand above the squashes.

This is the front salad bed, with the raspberries out front. Peas in the back (on a trellis), spinach, beets, romaine lettuce, kale, parsley & cilantro.

Home grown lettuce is pretty darned good!


There will be some sunflowers here and there to liven things up, mostly on the north end of beds, but there are some volunteers here and there. (Hmm. I keep meaning to plant beans to climb the sunflowers. Haven't remembered that yet.)