Garden Plantings

We've been planting a little bit. Every spring, we get the urge to start putting things in the ground, and you have to be reminded that you need to plant things at the RIGHT TIME. If you don't, things will die.

In other words: it's required a great deal of education to determine when to plant what. It's also a bit calculating, since you have to sometimes determine when to start things indoors in order to go outside on time.

Fun.

So this week, I'm starting my celery root inside. That's my fun project this year. The tomatoes will be started inside too in the next few weeks, that way they're seedlings to go outside in early May.

But, this week, we planted our rhubarb seedlings. We have two huge rhubarb plants, and I picked up 4 more cheapo ones last fall in a clearance sale (less than $1 each). And, when we moved our big rhubarb plants, a few roots were left behind (they have huge tuber roots), one of which sprouted. So, we now have two huge rhubarbs and five babies.

I love rhubarb because it's so beautiful all summer and in the winter, it dies 100% back. No ugly bare/dead-looking plant. Just disappears. It's one of the first things to pinken up in the spring too, and has these wonderful leaves that look like monstera leaves, all summer long. Oh, and you can eat it. :)

I put the babies in our small beds this year. I'll have to move them in the next year, but for now, this is a good spot. I'll have to research how rhubarbs do in pots, since having a yard spotted with our rhubarb could be really pretty in the summer (and maintenance-free in the winter).

I also planted my onions. I ordered our onions this year from The Onion Shed. I looked locally, but there was a ton of sweet and red onions. That's fine, but it's difficult to store those onion types. These are yellow onions, but ones we can store for a long time. Nice. Yes, I did plant them a LITTLE close together. There always is some die-off, and I also want to pick a few for green onions.

Right next door to the onions is the spinach-- no growth yet. But, that's pretty typical.
Last year, I saw great success in my onions when they were covered in plastic. So, I may very well cover both the spinach bed and onion bed for warmth to encourage growth. I HATE dealing with plastic, but it is nice. Still, with the amount of rain we get here (1/3 of an inch yesterday, with weird wind gusts up to 60 mph), it can be difficult to have plastic on plants. Any rainfall and the plastic could become dislodged and smash the seedlings underneath with heavy rain on plastic.

But, at least the raspberries are doing well! I'm going to be taking down the entire current trellis and replacing it with a very basic one-- four posts and wire to keep the vines contained. I'm considering leaving in the current wire you see in the photos and tying the vine stakes to it. Thoughts? That way, I'd have mostly vertical growth rather than crazy sideways stuff. Hmm. I see no reason why I couldn't, so long as I didn't tie it too tight.
If the raspberries look awfully short to you, it's because I trimmed them back. You don't have to trim them so far back every year. But, it's only year 2 of us having these canes, and I wanted to promote growth. By not having to bear two crops (one in early summer, one in late summer), the plants can put their energy into growing bigger. This should result in more berries in late summer and, particularly, more berries next year. I'm already seeing a huge growth in new seedlings and leaves, so perhaps this worked.

So, that's the news in the yard. We need to mulch around the beds. BADLY. We'll see if we're able to get to that sometime soon.