It’s spring, and you know what that means? My 2024 garden is off and running. As I talked about in a previous blog post, I decided to start planting much earlier this year. During the first week of March I put onions and potatoes in the ground, started a few potted herbs and some greens (kale, spinach, and salad bowl lettuce) and all are doing well.
On the down side, the seedlings I started this year haven’t done as well as last year. I’m sure they’re going to pull through and be just fine, but most of them are leggy and are taking a while to get their second leaves. I’m not sure if that’s because I used a different seed starting mix, a different seed starting container, or different grow lights, or a combination of all these factors. I’ve moved them out of my indoor greenhouse and in front of a sunny window, and that seems to have helped.
We’ve had a ton of warmer weather and the danger of frost is over anyway, so I’m thinking of getting these plant babies of mine into the ground this week where they can hopefully really thrive. I also have a long list of flowers and pollinator-friendly items that I plan to direct sow this weekend. A few of those items are sunflowers, zinnias, borage, and marigolds. If all goes as planned, I’ll have a beautiful selection of flowers in my garden this year…and I’m not mad about it one bit!
In addition to the seedlings and the items I started in March, earlier this week I direct sowed pole beans in my home garden and a handful of bush beans at my plots at the community garden. Green beans are a favorite in our house and they’re so easy to preserve through pressure canning. I plan to succession plant bush beans throughout the summer to keep my harvest going through early fall.
And because I feel like gardening is more than just taking action out in the dirt, there’s always more I can learn and my favorite learning modality is reading. We started 75 Hard again on April 1st (nope, it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke) and part of the program is committing to reading at least 10 pages in a non-fiction book every day for 75 days. I decided that every book I read during this round of 75 Hard will pertain to increasing my skills and knowledge in the areas of gardening, homesteading, and herbalism. I just finished my first book and am getting ready to start my second, Growing an Edible Landscape, which I found at my library.
In addition to the flowers and pollinator plants I’m starting soon, there’s still a few more seeds I need to start this month, mostly warm weather herbs, which I hope to get going in the next week. Now, for a bit of just for fun news! My public library just started a seed library, and of course I had to peruse it, even though I have quite a robust seed library of my own. Most of the items were things I already have in my seed library or am already growing, with the exception of one item: berries.
When I saw the huckleberry and wonderberry seeds at my public library’s seed library, I couldn’t resist. So, even though my garden has already been drawn up (my hubby did it using CAD 🙂 ) and thoroughly planned out, I’m going to squeeze in planting the berries by planting them in a discarded plastic tote I found in my neighborhood (I’m thinking about writing a future blog post about growing in repurposed and upcycled containers because I have quite the collection now).
Until my next garden update, know I’m wishing you great weather and am right here with you rockin’ that gardening manicure 😉
Amanda Bretz 