The Garden in Early May

Last month’s abundant rain pretty much kept me out of the garden because the ground was too soft. With a stretch of nice days I’ve finally gotten a start on my spring planting. So far I’ve planted watermelon, okra, summer squash, green beans, and amaranth. I waited to plant my tomato seedlings because we got another heavy rain last Thursday. Being house-started, I was afraid they were still too tender to take such a beating.

Since the newly planted spring garden still looks like bare ground, all I have to show you is the finishings-up of the winter garden. Once that’s done, I’ll have room to plant more.  So let’s start with the hoop house.

Most of my salad greens are bolting, even with the shade cloth, so I’m just waiting to collect the seed. For example -

I also have arugula, corn salad, kale, mizuna, and lettuce that I want to save seed from. In particular, I want to make a note of the lettuce I planted last November, because even though it’s starting to send up flower stalks, it hasn’t turned bitter yet. Amazing!

It’s surrounded by volunteer chickweed, which I allowed to grow because it’s both culinary and medicinal. I use it for salad greens, to dry for herbal salves, to feed as fresh greens for the chickens and ducks, to chop up for the goats, and as a living mulch.

Another living mulch area has been my multiplier onion bed.

Lots of volunteer vetch appeared, which I left because it’s a nitrogen fixer, has pretty little purple flowers, keeps other things (that I don’t want) from growing, and can be cut back, dried, and added to the goats’ hay pile.

Here’s another such bed.

The violets make a beautiful living mulch. I do pull a few “weeds” from these beds, but also, I seem to have less problems with wire grass where there is a dense ground cover. This observation is why I planted clover in the area below my new swale. I cleared out three wheelbarrow loads of wire grass from that little plot and really don’t want it coming back! Mulch doesn’t deter it, but it tends to show up less where a thick ground cover shades the soil.

So far so good! Except for a bit too much henbit, the clover has come up very well with wire grass mostly around the edges of the clover plot. I turned it under in two places plant watermelons.

I plant only one variety of melon every spring, but I change the varieties from year to year. That means our variety is annual, we aren’t overrun with melons, and I don’t have to worry about cross-pollination!

On the other side of the hoop house I have a row of Savoy cabbages.

Also some radishes blooming.

I especially like this variety and want to save lots of seed.

So now I have to wait again for things to dry out a bit; then I can get back into the garden and finish planting.

Your turn. Anybody else getting their hands in the dirt?