Summer Seeds

The time of the Cool Season crops is nearly over. My napa cabbage is going to seed, although the bok choi is beautiful. I know it's only a matter of time for it as well, though. I have been harvesting whole heads of cabbage and lettuce, recently, to hit the 1/3 target by the end of April, and that's mostly been achieved.
 April Challenges:
1. Remove and safely store the row covers. Well, the covers are removed, but I cant get a solid day of sunshine to dry them out for storage. So they are lying flat in the back yard.

2. Harvest at least 1/3 of your cool season crops. This has not been achieved. I've brought in 1/3 of my napa cabbage and butter crunch lettuce, but very little of the Bok Choi, Chard, and Kale. The last two freeze rather well. I definitely need to be more aggressive with my harvest.

3. Sow warm season seeds. Here, however, I've done much better.

 

Here, I have Tomatoes on the far right, Peppers in the center, Nasturtiums on the middle left, and a row of Dill on the far left.  Once again, I have been tremendously impressed with the Aerogarden's ability to sprout nearly everything.

Below are the dill, nasturtiums and peppers. Several of the Nasturtiums have come up, but not all of them have spread full cotyledons.  All the Dill is up, and most of the peppers but there are at least 2 cells that have produced nothing.

 

On the other side, the many rows of tomatoes are growing well.  I have three rows of tomatoes, with the third row (from the right) a patio cherry tomato that is designed to be self-dwarfing.  Other tomatoes include Roma, Better Boy.  Basil is in the fourth row.

 

I can see that 2-4 seeds sprouted per cell, so some painful thinning will have to take place in the future.  This is at about 7 days since sowing

April Harvest update

This month is the payoff of the winter garden.

Throughout the last two weeks, my harvest has been ongoing.  The lettuce, kale, cabbage, and chard have been abundant.  I have been snipping off individual outer leaves and it doesn't look like I have really made a dent in the lettuce.  It's gotten to the point where I have had to remove entire heads just to thin out the bed a bit.  The butter crunch lettuce is starting to form heads, which is very cool to see. I usually grow leaf lettuce and I wondered what arcane mystery was involved in this heading lettuce: it turns out the mystery happens all on its own.

I have removed the plastic row covers from the raised beds.   On the 17th, we had a low of 32 F. and on the 21st, we had a low of 36 F.  At this point, any danger of frost is over, and the cool evening temperatures would actually help these crops, to keep them from bolting.  The greater temperature concern now is from very high daytime temperatures inside the tunnel.

The other reason for the row covers is to give shelter against desiccating winds and soaking rains.  With the plants as substantial as they are, that is less of a worry.  The water table is lower so drainage is much better.  And the garden could probably benefit from any rainfall, at this point.

Leafy bed is planted

Just a post to confirm that the Kale and Chard have been planted in the upper bed.  The challenge on the February garden schedule was to get the first bed in by the end of February.  With an off-the-record midnight planting session, I can confirm that this goal was met.

Kale lists itself as 45 days to maturity so I can begin harvesting leaves in the middle of April.  Chard and Buttercrunch lettuce are both listed as 55-60 days to maturity, so they will be ready at the end of April.  Both of these should be picked young, starting with the outer leaves.

The high temperature today was in the low 70s, although at 6 am this morning, I was scraping frost off my windshield as I left the house.  The new seedlings are under plastic so they should be fine.  In fact, the lettuce that I transplanted a few days ago is standing up straight.  So any doubts that I may have had that February was too early for cool season crops have certainly been put to bed, so to speak.

So now I have the second and third beds to plant if I wish. I am following the garden layout I detailed here.   I don't have to do any more than one, but they are sitting there fallow if I am so inclined.

First Planting

In commemoration of leap day, February 29th, I felt I needed to post a progress update.  It is Monday, and this past weekend I planted the first batch of lettuce.  I still have today left to plant the other half of the leafy bed, with Kale and Chard.  But even if I don't get it done tonight, I will at least have reached my goal of getting something into the finished bed by the end of February.

The weather this weekend was between 32 and 38 degrees.  Today, it is projected to get up to 70 F.  By the end of the week, it will be back down in the 40s.  This is the challenge of February.