P.S. It’s not like I haven’t given the planning any thought at all. The raised beds are going by the garage because that’s the sunniest spot, and they will get done first because veggies need lead time! And the rest will get done in bits and pieces.
I’m kinda a newbie but have a year’s experience.
First, are you a homebrewer?
Make sure you like the type of hop you’re growing. Only my Cascade was harvestable and then I decided I really don’t like Cascade. Go figure. I did get a harvest brew and probably 3 ounces of additional hops out of it. Really good for a first year rhizome. N Brewer came up but no flowers (it’s sprouted this year).
I would check Craig’s list to see if there are any hop plants (or rhizomes) you can buy. This will guarantee a good harvest this year. I got a good haul off of Craig’s list this year and the rhizome was about 3x fatter than the ones I got last year on line and at the HBS. These two sites sell small hop plants on line and I’m guessing this is better than rhizomes.
http://www.highhops.net/about-plants.html
http://www.greatlakeshops.com/shop-now.html
Homebrew shops all have rhizomes in stock. I bought some really crappy ones that were dead twigs from Northern Brewer dot com last year. Then my local HBS gave me a handful of rhizomes for free since the season had passed. I planted in June and got a small harvest out of the Cascade.
Now is the time to get hop crowns or rhizomes in the ground. For more mature plants, you will want to trim back until May 1. Basically, you don’t want the hops to mature too fast. Ideally, they hit 12 - 15’ high on the Summer Solstice and then ripen.
I found basicbrewing podcasts on hop growing to be really helpful. Especially one from 3-3-16 titled springtime hop care. A guy from Gorst Valley Hops covered a ton in the 1 hour podcast.
Dig a giant hole, fill with mulch and high nitrogen content (like chicken manure). You might even want a barrier since hops spread out like bamboo. Let me know if you have more questions.
Things have begun to happen here. My grape cuttings are just about ready to put in the ground. Lettuce is doing well in the coldbox, tomato seedlings are growing nicely and I am ready to rototill the big family garden. Loving spring!
We went away for a week (what an awful time of year to be away from the garden for a week…) and when we got back my tray of tomato seedlings had fallen off its shelf and was ruined. I had eggplant and pepper seeds in that flat too, but they hadn’t germinated, so whatever.
It’s probably at the time of year when I should give up and buy plants (our frost-free date was yesterday), but I’ve found some resources that say due to the long slow springtime here in the Puget Sound area, you can start pepper and eggplant seeds as late as April 15, and tomatoes as late as May 1. So I’m crossing my fingers and trying it. I really want to start my own seedlings. I’ll keep these indoors, on a heat mat, to get them going as fast as possible.
Also, a mouse got into the greenhouse and dug all my ornamental grass seeds out of their cells and ate them. DANGIT.
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It’s probably at the time of year when I should give up and buy plants (our frost-free date was yesterday), but I’ve found some resources that say due to the long slow springtime here in the Puget Sound area, you can start pepper and eggplant seeds as late as April 15, and tomatoes as late as May 1. So I’m crossing my fingers and trying it. I really want to start my own seedlings. I’ll keep these indoors, on a heat mat, to get them going as fast as possible.
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I’m not a big gardener but Seattle really sucks for tomatoes. Go for small one, early maturation and we plant ours southern facing with radiated heat off of the house, and it’s still a meager harvest.
Our best crops have been green onions, lettuce, peas, some peppers, strawberries, hops and herbs like thyme (or stuff like lemon balm). I try for Halloween pumpkins every year and the result is dismal. Crappy soil and rain until the 5th of July makes it challenging…
Yeah, we learned that last year. Our garden is the former manure heap, so things grow like crazy, and we had lots of cherry tomatoes and Juliets–but the slicers rotted before the fruit ripened, in early October. So I’m only trying Juliet and one mid-size hybrid called Sweet Tangerine that did really well for us in Illinois. My husband’s going to experiment with a single store-bought heirloom on a hot, bright south-facing wall. We’ll see.
This weekend we had our first harvest of the season - asparagus! Normally this doesn’t happen for another three weeks or so but this year has featured some weird weather starting with the Winter That Wasn’t.
Anywho, also sowed the following so far:
54 sugar snap peas
34 spinach
20 carrot
a packet of zinnias (yeah I know the packet advises sowing in May but see above comments)
Looks like the strawberries are coming to life and our six blueberry bushes foliage opened this weekend.
The solanaceae seeds are all coming up, which is a huge relief. Tons of tomatoes and a few stray peppers & eggplants. Yay.
All the soft fruit is alive, which is a relief. I haven’t peeked at the direct-sow lettuce, chard, carrots, and radishes, which are under fleece tunnels, in quite a while though. Last time I did it was a nightmare of weeds and I’m not sure I can deal with it.
Finally got the last of the seedlings planted this weekend. I’ve got several different varieties of cucumber, along with some yellow squash. The fig bushes (trees?) seem to be fine; the black mission one has loads of green fruit on it already, and the brown turkey is developing a nice covering of leaves. I’ve also planted flowers – some wildflower mixes (a couple of which claim to be “bee-friendly”), bachelor’s buttons, alyssum, zinnias, forget-me-nots, some tiny pansies, and morning glories.
I don’t know if this counts, but I’m also in the process of encouraging the lawn to regrow along the sides of the house. Pine straw beds were put in years ago, but they were never used for planting, and the bed on the shady side of the house was seriously rotten. I’ve had very good luck getting some Scotch and Irish mosses to grown on that side of the house. On the other side, I’ve managed to get some significant growth using some lawn repair seed mix.
I’m glad I waited, we’ve had a long cool spring. Also glad I scrapped my plan to grow melons! I don’t think we’ll get the requisite 100 days of sun this year. I have put in:
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Too many tomatoes, as usual: a few Heinz paste, a yellow and a chocolate cherry, and one other that I can’t recall. Think I kept the tags, though. Some round juicy slicing kind, I assume. I’m trying a few different methods for support this year, I put both cherries into a big mesh cylinder cage, and one of the pastes I’ve just staked, the others have regular cages. We’ll see. I always have dreams of pruning my tomatoes, but I seldom follow through…
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A zucchini, although my stupid husband won’t eat them. I plan to give lots away, eat plenty myself, and GRATE THEM UP AND HIDE THEM IN EVERYTHING I COOK. Do you think he heard that?
It’s already flowering. I put an upside-down tomato cage over it, since they mostly bear at the base of the plant. -
My usual pickling cukes, two of, plus a specific cornichon variety. Also a new tarragon plant, since you can’t make cornichon without it! I still have heaps of dill seed left over for regular pickles, so I won’t bother growing more this year, although the green seeds are so much more flavourful than the brown dried.
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Peppers! A few bells, a poblano, a fresno.
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An eggplant: I went to the fancy nursery and they had an awesome variety from Ethiopia, egg-sized, with red with orange stripes!
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A tomatillo! Hadn’t seen the plants around before, it’s flowering like billy-oh. I see chile verde in my future.
Still got onions and garlic struggling manfully away. So many onions have gone to seed, they’re such divas. Too much water! Not enough water! Too much sun! Not enough sun! FLOWER, boom. All over. I’ve just been pulling them and using them as needed. The onion flower florets are nice in salads.
I saw chickpeas/garbanzo seedlings at the nursery, but decided I didn’t have space. Anyone grown them before? Pretty foliage. Apparently they taste more pea-y when eaten fresh.
Asparagus is losing steam, sugar snap peas are getting overgrown with weeds. The spinach has been a complete dud. Time to get the summer veggies sown and transplanted.
Finally got Home Depot to deliver lumber to build raised beds. They only fucked it up twice.
So this weekend my husband will build as many as he can get built, and I’ll start to shovel dirt into them. These will be in addition to the veg patch, which is full of pickable lettuce and radishes, sugar snap peas that refuse to flower, green strawberries, and infant beans, zucchini, pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, broccoli, and brussels sprouts. The raised beds will go first to herbs, of which I have parsley, cilantro, dill, chamomile, and basil waiting, then to lettuce and chard, and whatever space is left to the cutting flowers I’ve started from seed–mostly scabiosa but some zinnias too.
The forest garden is being reshaped. We cut out the diseased laurels and I killed the hypericum groundcover. I’ve planted thirty hostas along with foxglove, pulmonaria, Dutch iris, and columbines among the wreckage.
Of the paired herbaceous borders, I only managed one this year. They have to be edged and filled to a sort of mini-raised-bed status so they drain in the soggy PNW winters. I planted that one with hollyhocks, oriental poppies, foxglove, dianthus, succulents, columbine, Siberian iris, and flowering herbs. We’ll see what survives and what drowns, and let that inform what I put into the other border next year.
Gooseberries and currants are first-year but happy. Looks like I’ll get a handful of most varieties.
So much for my hopes. I lost the first two dozen or so immature fruits to Blossom End Rot, something I’ve never had to deal with before. And to add insult to injury, I finally got some ripe tomatoes this week - and they aren’t Cherokee Purples! They look like Romas, which are perfectly respectable tomatoes but not what the nursery tag said and not what I was looking forward to. Still gonna eat them, of course.
I went ahead and started some Stupice tomatoes from seed two weeks ago. Which means harvest time runs into Autumn, but this is a cold-climate variety that has done well for me before.
Vegetable garden. Ohio. LOTS of clay in our soil.
Planted tomatoes, lima beans, peas, squash, cucumber, and hot peppers.
Everything was started from seed. Lima beans and peas were direct sowed. It was also the first time I ever planted lima beans and peas.
Tomatoes, squash, and cucumber are doing well. Hot peppers are not doing well.
One row of peas never came up. In the other row, only about ten pea plants came up. Not sure why. I think I need to install a support fence for the ones that came up.
Lima beans are doing pretty well so far.
Weeds and grass have been a huge problem. I put mulch around the plants over the weekend. Hopefully that will help.
I got in three rounds of radishes before they tasted hot and I gave up. Had a lettuce patch we picked from for a while, but weeds overtook it. Have been picking broccoli heads as they mature for a month. Snow peas are just coming into their own–picked a mess yesterday and looks like I’ll get three or four more before they’re finished. First zucchini just starting to form. Tomatoes are starting to flower. My brussels sprouts plants are healthy, but I have no clue when they’ll form sprouts.
Peppers and eggplant are still tiny, alas. We just haven’t had the heat they want. Sunflowers are huge, though. And fennel. Potato plants look happy too, and I think I’ll dig them up on my birthday. Like Monty Don.
The big flower garden I planted this spring is doing well. Only the hollyhocks have suffered from voles nibbling their leaves off.
In the shade garden, last year’s hostas couldn’t be happier, and I haven’t lost any of this year’s baby hostas. The new pulmonaria and foxglove is well established. Bigroot geranium and sweet woodruff is sending out runners in the dark corners. I put in a big order of snowdrops and all sorts of fritillaria, to put around the hellebore this fall. And I’m trying some seed starting: I have several kinds of columbines and primroses stratifying in the fridge, and a tray of hosta and spiderwort set to germinate.
I find it’s more effective to give the garden a going-over with a stirrup hoe once a week, preferably after watering. You’ll stop anything from putting down deep roots or going to seed, that way, and eventually the weeds will get bored of constantly trying to get established and there won’t be as many.
Finally got my beds re-done and ready to go. Now to get plants in them. It’s late, so I will have to go with established plants.
I’m thinking tomatoes and strawberries. My daughter brought home a pumpkin that she started at school, so that’s in already.
I’d like a nice raspberry that doesn’t take over the yard and produces well. Any varieties to recommend? Thornless by preference.
No specific varieties, but late-fruiting ones are nice because they produce on this year’s growth, so every year you just cut them to the ground. No taking over and no tricky pruning.
The cucumbers have started coming in! Something has destroyed my national pickling varieties; they’re producing bloated, yellow fruits that quickly rot. I’m very pleased with the sumter, straight eight, and smr 58 varieties. According to the internet, my squash plants are producing all male blossoms, so no squash this year. My flowers are not liking the heat at all; I’ve got some blooms though. My Irish mosses are all pretty much dead, except for the first one I planted; my Scotch mosses are doing ok. The grass patches are hanging in there.
I just got back from the patch, which looked fine even though I forgot to ask my plot neighbours to water it while I was away this past week. Maybe they did. Anyway, all alive, and one massive pickling cuke inflated to the size of my hand. The red onions have finally died back, pulled one for dinner tonight. My potatoes are flowering and some are starting to yellow, so might be time to pull them too. I have one pot of purple and about four pots of… not purple. Yellow and red I suppose. I just threw in some sprouty ones from the pantry, I think it was one of those bags of mixed colours.