Big harvest!

We just got back from 10 days out of town. I take a week or so vacation every year in summer and I'm always amazed by how much the garden seems to take off when I'm gone. Things grow slower when you see them every day. We had tons of stuff ready so this is just a big picture post, get ready...

cUcumber

Lots of yellow onions.

Cascadia snap pea from the second sowing this year.

First corn!

Scarlet runners and tri-colored bean mix.

Red pontiac potatoes.

Tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and lettuce too! We will eat well this week!

Sowing seed in the garden

I have been working on getting more beds made each week, and sowing seed as I go.

This week I put in:
- 12' double row of snap peas (Sugar Snap)
- 4' bed of spinach (Olympia Hybrid)
- 12' triple row bulb onion (Yellow, from sets)
- 12' double row runner beans (Scarlet Emperor)
- 12' double row pole beans (Tri-color mix, Blue Lake, Yellow Pole Wax, Purple Peacock)
- 24' of 3 plant clumps 2' apart of corn (Earlivee Hybrid)

I also transplanted some things I started from seed:
- one row, 7 plants, tomatoes (in walls-o-water)
- 12' double row leeks (unknown variety grown by a friend)

Whew. Lots of seed to keep wet.

First seeds

Got a start this weekend. Cooler spring weather vegetables can start to be planted out mid-april, so 4 weeks prior is a good time to get seeds going.

Started:
2 - 4" pots Mega Snap Pea
2 - 4" pots Oregon Sugar Pod snow pea
2 - 4" pots Fall Blend Broccoli
2 - 4" pots Danish Ballhead (120 days) cabbage
1 - 4" pot Derby Day (58 days) cabbage
1 - 4" pot Butterhead lettuce
1 - 4" pot The Redder the Better lettuce mix
2 - 4" pots Walla Walla sweet onion
4 - 2" pots Chives

It's a pain to drag out all the pots, flats, covers, seed mat, timers, and lights...but that "greenhouse smell", the scent of humid air and moist soil, that escapes when you peek under the plastic dome, makes it worth it after a long winter.

Summer vegetables

Yesterday was a big day for our summer veggies. Sowed lots of seed:

- four 2" pots Copra Hybrid onion (long keeper)
- two 2" each Guardsman onion (salad onion) and Purplette (bunching or keeper)
- two 4-packs Buttercrunch lettuce
- four 2" pots Sorrento broccoli (early spring raab)
- four 2" pots Derby Day cabbage (early cabbage)
- one 2" pot each of 8 tomato varieties:
Stupice (ultra early 2" fruit)
Sun Gold hybrid (sweet, orange cherry)
Oroma (italian sauce)
Cherokee Purple (heirloom)
Super Marzano Hybrid (sauce/drying Roma )
Cabernet (small red grape)
First Lady II hybrid (early slicer)
Brandywine (THE heirloom tomato to which all others are compared)

Started a bunch of flowers in 4" pots in the same manner as a week ago.

- Columbine (aquilegia 'McKana's Giants')
- Coreopsis 'Plains' (Coreopsis Tinctoria)
- Butterfly Chantilly Snapdragons (Antirrhinum majus)
- Bells of Ireland (Moluccella laevis)
- Pride of Gibraltar Cerinthe (Cerinthe major atropurpurea)
- Dwarf Dahlia 'Unwin's mix'
- Dahlia 'Fireworks'

Onions and Spinach

I actually already started this month. The weather the last 10 days was unusually warm for around here this time of year. Sunny and 55 days and no rain for almost 2 weeks! I was able to dry out the soggy soil enough to sow by covering a patch of soil with a plastic tunnel cloche for about 10 days.

Feb 16: planted 15 row ft of Stuttgarter onion (long keeper) from sets
Feb 23: sowed 4 row feet of Bloomsdale Spinach under plastic tunnel cloche