Transitioning from cool to warm crops

Delish!  Lettuces from seed are coming up nicely.  We're still harvesting spinach & now finding varieties of lettuces.  That stake near the lettuce is supporting a trellis for cucumbers.  We're hoping to extend the lettuce harvest by letting the cucumbers grow up the trellis & provide shade for the delicate leaves.

Kevin created this bed last weekend.  He incorporated the existing stump in with some re-purposed wood from our neighbor.  The bed is shaped in a triangle to give us an easier turn radius when we wheelbarrow soil  into parts of the yard.  

We haven't grown our own starts from seed over the winter because we travel.  For this reason, we usually purchase a few starts from Greensgrow Farms where we know the plants are organic and non-GMO.  This past weekend we picked up some tomatoes, peppers, and borage.  This bed features two varieties of tomato, sweet red peppers, borage, & basil.  Our friend Sonora turned us onto borage-- companion planting it, basil, & tomatoes together ensure that the tomatoes are flavorful!  Plus, borage is a pretty little plant.  We have several more beds with tomatoes & almost all feature borage nearby.

I have a few friends who have been relentlessly asking when it's safe to plant tomatoes.  I say plant away!  We should be past the risk of a freezing night.  If you're busy, or uncertain about the weather, you could probably plant until Mother's Day.  Enjoy!

Full bellies from the Rooted Landscaping home garden

Here's a sample of what's cooking in the Rooted Landscaping home garden.  In the photo below you see blueberry hill extending along the length of the fence.  In the foreground, against the fence, we've planted two rhubarbs.  Apparently they like buddies.  We planted bare root bulbs where they'll get plenty of sun & have enough room to expand and grow.  We probably won't get much of a harvest for two years.

I'm not a big rhubarb eater, but I do have substantial rhubarb aesthetic appreciation.  These are big focal points in a garden.  They have beautiful color & become fairly low-maintenance once established.  I like to integrate rhubarb into landscape designs for the sheer color and shape.  Edible plants are often lovely.  

Outside of the photo but around where the photographer stood is the little baby persimmon tree.  Given the orientation of the yard, as the tree goes its shade should fall downhill, where we plan a little yoga space (!) & leave the adjacent plants in full sun.

The trench slightly down hill from the rhubarb is now housing asparagus roots.  As the spears begin to poke up we'll slowly add more soil until the bed is level with the grade of the hill.  This plant is also fairly low maintenance.  Most asparagus patches have a life-span of 10-12 years.  We'd like to extend the patch in 5 years to create a nice on-going cycle of asparagus.

Oh, glowing corn.  In the foreground is a raised bed reserved for our friend, Sonora.  We've lured her with land so we get the added benefit of her insight into our growing garden.  See that goofy business with old fence doors & posts behind?  A jerry-rigged cucumber trellis to shade some lettuces.  Give it time.  I have faith.

The rows of logs & soil beyond now house corn seeds & soaker hoses.  There are four rows so that we could interplant corn & sunflowers in diamond patterns.  This is reccommended for corn growth.  They like small hills for water drainage. Given our surplus of logs we decided to hold in the arable soil for the corn with these logs.  It helps direct the water down hill and away from the base of the stalks.  So far so good.

Once we have about three inches of corn stalks we plan to plant the three sisters: squash to crawl over the ground & create a weed barrier, and beans to climb the corn stalks & fix the soil nitrogen.

This little raised bed is showing some life.  We planted the sweet peas & chard early.  They're said to be nice companion plants & provide an early harvest.  There's a big ole chard leaf coming in against the warmth of the log border.  There are more peas planted in other parts of the yard with natural trellising.

Early yields of onions and red cabbage.  We're waiting for the onion leaves to fall over to begin harvesting, drying, & curing the crop.

More food & fun to come!  Yum!