Late Spring Garden Update

Summer is just around the corner, and it's time to have the garden fully planted! I managed to get the last of my seeds in today, and it feels good to have the garden full of growing things!

The potatoes are about to become the stars of the garden, at least in terms of total greenery. I've got a lot of them - about 12 plants of each of 4 varieties. You can see them in the update photo I took a few days ago:

Yesterday, I dug a couple big holes in the rough area by the firepit. The soil was thick (a bit like clay), so I added some sphagnum moss. Then I planted some butternut squash, carnival squash, and sunflowers.

You can see these 2 new gardens in yesterday's update pic:

You may also notice the lettuce getting big again! I've had 3 fresh salads already, and it will keep producing until the weather gets hot.

It's good to be able to pull food out of the ground. 2 months ago this was a frozen backyard lawn. Now there are garden beds full of food plants. (See my early Spring update here and my mid Spring update here.)

Yukon Gold potato plant:

The green beans aren't looking great:

But my carrots are doing well:

I have 3 varieties of green peas up, and they're all in need of support to climb on!

I found some scrap wood and twine, and made these trellises:

The peas already seem to get the idea...

In late Spring, my new garden looks like this:

Here it was 2 months ago:

I did a little animation showing 30 progress photos taken over 52 days:

I've been growing tomatoes for a long time, and pride myself on my genetics, which I continue on year after year. For several years, I've had major health problems, and only intermittent access to a garden, so it hasn't been easy. My wife and I were even homeless for a while back in 2016 and 2017. Our belongings were all in storage except what we could carry on our backs. One thing in my backpack was my heirloom seed collection.

This year, my Amish Paste tomato seeds failed to germinate. This put me in a rough situation as I only had some 2014 seeds left. They had been with me for 9 years, having been grown at my Grandma's house before she passed away. Instead of just tossing them in the garden and hoping for the best, I opted to see if I could coax them to life inside, using the time-tested plastic bag and paper towel germination method. I also tried this for my Orange Bell seeds.

Success! I was stoked to see those little white tails. Those are the Orange Bell tomatoes, set aside from 2021 and 2022 crops. But what about the Amish Paste?

9 years old, and almost every single one of them germinated! They're eager little sprouts. So, I got a tray with some garden soil and sphagnum moss:

In go several of each of the nearly-lost varieties...

It was a relief to see them come up today. I'd really like them to survive to maturity and produce me a new batch of seeds, preserving the genetics.

Once they're strong enough I'll put them out into the garden. There's still some real estate in the back section!

I've enjoyed being able to show you what one guy with nerve and heart failure can do, in between taking care of 2 young children and a crippled wife. I've literally done all this with an old shovel and a bag of seeds I collected from past harvests.

I imagine what it would be like to have 4 or 6 gardens like this. After all, there's room to do that here, with space left over for kicking around the soccer ball. I don't know if I would survive the process of removing all that lawn by hand, and it would be a full-time job just weeding and watering a farm of that size, but it's interesting to think about.

Thanks for visiting my garden, and I hope you'll check it out again soon as we head into Summer!

DRutter