2020 Garden Journal - April-May 2020

My monthly garden journals are in part to help me remember what I was doing when, but also written for my grandchildren about the gardens of our their ancestors.

Dear Grandchildren:

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. This is turning out to be a very wet year. I'll take that since we now live on the edge of the Cumberland Plateau and last year we had six months of 90+ degree weather, ridiculous humidity, and a draught. The surrounding counties had flooding.

Your Grandpa Ted being a life-long farmer, would have really enjoyed watching the weather apps on the phone because storms would head straight for us, hit the edge of the plateau, and scoot right up the edge into the next county and dump. We had nada.

Shot from the bottom of the eight raised beds, through the livestock panel arches to the tiny garden house. I have been battling the grass in the walkways and 30 percent vinegar is expensive, so I'm going to probably try a limited amount of salt water, if I can make sure it stays in the paths and doesn't dribble down into the beds. There are several rows behind me using woven weed barrier fabric, but not too many yet -- watching to see if the rain actually makes it to the plant roots.

My lateness in planting my garden this year is intentional. I notice a lot of other gardeners here in the south fight with pests and I thought I'd try something I have heard a lot: break the cycle. Don't plant when then nasties are breading and multiplying.

This has also taken a lot of self-induced pressure to get everything out as early as possibly, in part because I am still building garden beds. There is a lot of rockiness in the dirt here, and the slope of the property, which we would call a mountain back in Ohio can't really be easily tilled so I'm experimenting with various kinds of raised beds.

As you know, I move pretty darn slowly!

My garden this year is doing really well although my experiment to plant cold crops early didn't really work. They took forever to germinate then immediately bolted on the first warm day so I have been cutting them up for salads or scrambled eggs, including the flowers (although I may save some seeds for this fall's garden.)

Scrambled eggs with eggs from my neighbor's flock of three, with sautéed bok choy, and diced green onions and garlic, all from the garden -- yum!. You can eat your garlic any time, it just hasn't grown to multiple cloves this time of year.

"As God is my witness, I will never go hungry again." -- Scarlett O'Hara, Gone With The Wind, my second favorite movie ever. 

Radishes & carrots.

Above is my carrot patch, using my secret growing methods. If you read some of my history gardening blogs, you's notice some about the Y2K era, before you were born. I learned a lot of new things in each gardening/homesteading era because as you know, I'm a bit of a nerd, hahaha. 

One of the cool things I learned in that era was how to plant the tiny, tiny carrot seeds efficiently: one cup of sand, one package of carrot seeds and one package of radish seeds. Radishes and carrots are mixed together because the radishes are bigger seeds and grow quickly so that one knows where the row is, plus pulling them out to eat creates space for the carrots to grow. The sand helps make plenty of space between everything, plus helps to make heavy soil lighter.

Rhubarb plant started from seed last year. All the rain has made it HUGE this year!

Another thing I learned during the Y2K era: somebody encouraged everyone in our homesteading group to try planting one new thing every year. Although your grandparents had a rhubarb patch on the west side of the garden, I had never started it from seed. It seems to be quite easy and is definately much cheaper than buying root stock (also called crowns).

Last year, probably because of the draught, only one of the three pots I planted lived. This year, because of my garden expansion, I decided to plant an entire row. All 22 seeds sprouted and took off like gangbusters so I have shared around the neighborhood. I can't eat THAT much rhubarb, and as you know, Grandpa Rick lives on coffee and bacon (lol).

I still have a lot of things to plant, so out to the garden I must go. Love ya'll :-)

Gramma Debbie