Harvest Monday 5/4/2015

Today my harvest (except the greens) is unusual:

Japanese knotweed of the left and asparagus on the right.

Japanese knotweed is a common weed but also a tasty edible treat in spring.
In the early spring, Japanese knotweed looks like an army of nondescript fat, green, red-flecked stalks poking up from the ground. I am not growing them, only discovered them last fall on the edge of the plot. I was using Japanese knotweed tincture and ordered some dried roots for making it.
Of course after I made an order, I found free plants.
When the shots are young, they taste like rhubarb, or spinach and sorrel. 
I ate them raw but it also can be steamed as asparagus.

Please visit : Daphne’s Dandelions “Harvest Monday” where everyone can share links to their harvest or how they are using their harvests for the week.

Plating first tomatoes, oka and potatoes

 The spring weather turns out to be a summer very fast, we missed 50s and came to 70s in one week. I decided not to plant radishes but tomatoes.

 and some oka (white and pink) beneath the large tomatoes plants.

 The new bed in the middle with the strawberries bed on the left and carrot bed on the right.

 Baby basil

 I also had some store-bough organic potatoes that sprouted, I planted them in post and they grew huge. I found the small bed for them.

 newly planted potatoes.

 This year I am a big fan of pine shavings.
I want to cover all the beds and all the passes to prevent weeds and dry soil.

 Strawberry is started to bloom, so lovely.

 My 3-years old red currants are blooming this year!

Other plants like cabbages are doing pretty well too.

Carrots

The fist carrots were in on Apr 12, it is 10 days now and I can see some of the young plants up.


I still have some small carrots in the ground, missed by me and my deers.

 First I cleaned the bed from leaves (this winter I covered most of the beds with oak leaves and black fabric), then added compost and peat moss.

 I sowed the seeds, cover them with peat moss and tapped with wood board.

The bed is covered with "argibon".












In a meantime my rhubarb is up

And greens in square foot bed is doing good.

 

Spring strawberry clean up

I am not very experienced gardener, especially in growing strawberry.

I am growing everbering and june berring types and I do not have much sun in the garden, which may be the reason I do not have big harvest.



The first type of berries I got was Ozark beauty - and the plants  and 3 years old now.


You can see the plant inself is pretty healthy after the winter. I was covering them with oak leaves.
It was a lit of snow this winter and some of plants did not survive - I see the growing point is rotting and 3-4 plants so I have to remove them.




Last year I planted 3 more bareroot  types - 1. Honeoye
That's how the bed was look like after the winter - plants covered with wood shaving and leaves.

I did not see berries last (the first) summer.

I was also surprised that some of the plants roots are out of the soil.
I checked the plants, removed the old mulch, added compost to the roots and new mulch - wood shaving again.

 The bed after the clean-up.

 Two other types are Tristar and Tribute, everbering types - they were very productive last year.

My experiment was of growing them on the black mulch. I like this idea, no weeds, but I lost 5 plants this winter. The plants were pulled out of the ground and frozen.

The Tristar plants after cleaning.






My absolutely love is alpine strawberry - last year I added to my collection -

Golden Alexandria.
Small plants, with green-yellow leaves and everbering berries with very strong smell!
Not so much but as a treat!

 There is one of the bed under my red currant bushes.

This one is a wild strawberry that was brought from NH forest and overwintered here.

Harvest Monday 4/6/2015

My harvest today is some of the volunteer garlic.
Last year I planted some bulbs here and there to deter deers and also some of the small bulbs I probably missed to harvest. And now I have volunteers everywhere.

 The whole garlic bed, planted in different time.

 Overwintered lettuce and asian cabbage.












The first of the bulbs.

Green peas planted a week ago.




Shared at: Daphne’s Dandelions “Harvest Monday” where everyone can share links to their harvest or how they are using their harvests for the week.

Starting a first square foot bed

Some of the backyard in covered with snow, but the garden is full of spring sun. The forecast says there will be very mild night and good days like 40-50F.

So I decided to make One Good Raised Bed :)
I usually have 1-2 layers of  old bricks beds, but this one suppose to be a good example. I hope.

Last year it was a parsnip bed, parsnips were good but short and "hairy". I checked the soil - 4 inches of good loose organic soil and than red clay with rocks.

 No miracle the roots were not able to form. (I am gardening only 3 years and couldn't make all the beds fertile).
So I weeded, added lime, peat moss, "black kow", sand, urea fertilizer, 2x4 scrap woods and grid out of cord.

The first transplants are - spinach, chard, salad mix and Asian mix. I also sowed radishes and more spinach.

On the other bed with trellis (last year tomato trellis) I transplanted green peas - Lincoln.
All the plants we watered with warm water and covered with 2 sheets of row cover.

I have more peas transplants and I will wait till the first rows will survive.

Wishing everyone a nice spring gardening!

Winter 2015 Amaryllis

My Amaryllis plants did very good job this winter, almost all of them finished blooming now, and there is my report.

Alfresco

 Athena

 Moonscene and Violetta

 Fanfare

 Firedance, Alfresco and Ballerina

 Moonscene

 Moonscene again, my favorite with season!

 Violetta

 Zombie