Garden progress

Transplanted my little lettuce seedlings yesterday. Went back today to put up the plastic tunnel cloche - lows for the next 3 nights are about 33 degrees with 50% chance of snow! The plastic won't hold heat but will at least keep off the frost and any snow that might fall.


Also transplanted about 40 leeks around the garden. One row in front of the peas and one row behind where the peppers will go. Most vegetables in the allium family (onions) taste and smell bad to chewing or nibbling pests, so planting them around the garden is a good natural deterrent. Plus they are winter hardy around here, so I can pick what I need this summer and the rest will be usable through the winter.

I turned over some of my winter cover crop to make way for the leeks and was happy to see lots of nodules on the roots. Leguminous plants have a very unique and beneficial ability. In these root nodules, Rhizobium bacteria live and work symbiotically with the pea plant to use nitrogen in the air for growth, instead of the plants using whatever nitrogen may be in the soil. This nitrogen from the air becomes a part of the greens and roots of the pea plant. When the cover crop is turned over in the spring, it decomposes quickly and that nitrogen is released back into the soil. A natural plant fertilizer (or green manure)! Lugumes fix nitrogen at a rate of 50 to 100 lbs per acre, equivalent to 1-2 lbs of 30-0-0 fertilizer for my entire plot. Not a tremendous amount, but that's not all cover crops do! They control soil erosion, stop soil compaction through the heavy winter rains, help dry out the soil earlier in spring, and, after turning over in spring, leave the soil loose and friable due to a deep and vigorous root system. Not bad!



Strawberries are blooming too.