I didn’t give an update on the garden last month, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t going. Thank goodness, right?

This shot was before Rudi and I did some work today. Rudi pulled out a lot of weeds and planted some new seedlings. We now have half a dozen basil plants, a half dozen tomatoes, several peppers, a zucchini, and a cucumber in addition to the plethora of herbs and spring veggies. I harvested the rest of the arugula today, unearthing a bed of lettuce beneath it and will probably pull the spinach later this week. I will need to thin the sorrel again. (more…)

I fell asleep while photos were uploading last night, so we’re getting my post this morning instead…

The garden doesn’t know the world is falling apart. It just knows that rain has been falling and the temperatures have been pleasant for stretching a little taller each day. So each time we show up at the plot, it looks like this:

The violets are done for the season, so Rudi and I yank out the leaves. Because they grow by rhizome, they will be fine and will bloom again next spring (or, even, in the right conditions, in the fall). But without this step, there will be no strawberries, because the violets have dwarfed them for the most part.

The dahlia and gerbera daisy that I planted a couple weeks ago are bright spots in the garden, and it’s obvious from looking that the slugs think they look nice, too:

The tallest of my peas have reached the top of the supports I could give them once it was obvious I might have to work with what I had, rather than being able to acquire more garden stakes. I threw the tomato cages in to pinch hit last month and the peas thought they made a great addition to my more traditional trellising:

And they showed their pleasure with this:

There will be peas within the month!

Rudi and I did some more tidying of the garden plot this month. I find if I do a section at a time I hate it less. I hate it even less if Rudi does it.

The big tufty grass-like things are bunching onion grass that we planted one of our first couple years in the garden. The greens at the bottom are sorrel, which we also planted ages ago and which just reseeds itself.

Our herbs, which are at the back of the plot, also mostly survived the winter.

This is the bronze fennel, which grew to a six-foot behemoth last year.

I’m still working on clearing this back section out, but there’s purple sage, oregano, and mint back, at the very least.

The strawberries and violets are doing well, but I’d like several more strawberry plants and haven’t yet found any.

I planted peas a month ago, and planted more last week, because a month gave me better insight into which peas had not come up. I plant half-rows of single types at the start of the season for precisely this reason, although I’m not always great about keeping track of which type is which. Some of my seeds dated back a decade, while others were new last year or this.

I also planted spring greens — chard, lettuces, spinach, kale, and some others. Again, I can tell you which things are in the garden, but maybe not which ones they are until they come up.

That second shot is from Friday, and the amount they’ve grown in a week is noticeable. They’re at the top of the previous shot.

Our bunny may be back, because I notice the seedlings I planted (kale and spinach) had been munched. Of course, I did also pull a happy slug off a spinach leaf, so it may not be vertebrates that are the culprit.

If you can plant something, even just in a pot, it feels especially good this year to see seeds coming to life. Peas and greens are hardy and can be outside well before the last risk of frost.

As I’d hoped, the weather and my schedule cooperated and I got to spend time today puttering in my garden plot. And by puttering I mean, clearing the main bed, turning soil, and planting seeds.

But after a couple hours, it felt nice to see something looking so … tidy and taken care of.

The back portion is several rows of peas and the front row is several rows of spring greens.

I haven’t bought any new seeds this year, so we’re seeing what will sprout from past seasons. I feel more optimistic about the seeds from last year than the ones from 2009, but either way those seeds are out of my house and in the ground.

And while I’m relatively sure that doing this much planting so early in the year will guarantee a blizzard and frozen ground in the next two weeks, these are all plants that flourish in cooler weather and should be able to withstand a certain amount of cold.

Have you started thinking yet about what you’re going to grow this year?

I did pick many of the remaining tomatoes over the weekend, but left a few on the vine. While the outskirts of the city were at risk for a frost warning this week, the heat sink of a city keeps our garden a little warmer for longer.

I, do, however, have lots of peppers still growing. They’re always a reliable late-season crop for me.

There are fish peppers:

I grow them because they’re the cool stripey green and white of their leaves as they’re growing and then they turn the red you see below when they’re ripe.

There are lots of banana peppers:

And a few mini yellow bells:

I also still have basil left to harvest and turn into pesto for the winter.

The seeds I planted for fall greens don’t seem to have taken. I may give it a shot again this weekend when I’m there to see if anything comes of a late planting. It’ll all depend on when snow comes…