Gutters for Peas

The idea is that we start peas in the configuration that we will grow them in the garden with. A rew of peas. Slide them out of the gutter like an ice core, into their final home in the garden.

Quarantine Gardening

So everybody needs to stay at home. But it's spring. And I have a garden. So let's make use of that. Here's what went in this weekend.

Romaine lettuce on the left. Black nebula carrots on the right. They're really dark purple carrots, and I've never grown them before, and they look really cool in the package. I thought I would give them a try.

I'm trying something new with the radishes. I'm having trouble, year after year, with slugs eating the seedlings.

But I have noticed that the slugs don't like kale. So I have planted this bit full of radishes, with kale planted around the perimeter. 

I don't know that I'll keep the kale. I have a pint Jar full of kale seeds, collected from last year.

The wire frame in the middle of this is for cucumbers, which won't get planted for at least a month. They will, theoretically, climb up this trellis to the archway overhead.

This will be the Brassica bed. The far-right are seedlings of Swiss chard, various colors. Then the red cups are protecting the kale, except that half The kale is outside the cups and the slugs aren't even touching it. Aha! 

Behind the compost bin, between the compost and the fence, is what would otherwise be wasted space. We can't have wasted space. So I spread some flower seeds, a variety of sunflowers and a variety of nasturtiums. We'll see what happens with that. These two varieties are generally pretty maintenance-free.

Update: this is a month later. 

Starting Carrots

This spring, I got a package of carrot seeds from Germany. Exciting!

So it seems that all the carrot seedlings got stuck in one place. 

The instructions said to soak the seeds in wet sand through four or five days first. 

I've never heard of that, but it clearly helped them germinate well! But the sand also helped them stick together. That's probably not best. 

So today I transplanted 100 carrot seedlings or so. I'm told that you can't transplant carrots. Seemed to work OK.

Update: the transplants did well.