Aah, the first official garden update for 2010.  It’s great to be back at it.  We are having such a warm spring that I really could have planted my early crops a week or even maybe two weeks ago.

Here’s the garden, freshly worked up with a half bin of compost.  You can see there are four “beds” within the garden and three aisles.  I am trying to do two things here:

1) minimize the amount of space dedicated to walking
2) grow greater quantities of fewer varieties

The last two years I grew just a few plants of many different veggies and we just ate them as we went.  That doesn’t work as well when you also get a CSA box every week, so this year I’m trying to grow greater quantities of some things that I like to preserve.

In that vein, I’m growing cabbage (kraut), green beans (freeze), and banana peppers (pickled).  I’m also growing celeriac and parsnips, both of which keep well either in the ground or in a root cellar.  I also planted radishes and I plan to put some cukes in our cucumber cage as usual.

So today I planted: peas, cabbage, celeriac, radishes, and parsnips, all from seed.  The package instructions for both the celeriac and the cabbage say to start them indoors and transplant later, so I’m kind-of taking a bit of a gamble here.  My method for all was to scatter seeds over the entire area, then sprinkle with dirt, then water.  I will have to do some thinning when they come up — especially the cabbage.

Last year I had really bad luck with my peas: only about 2 of the 20 or 30 seeds that I planted actually came up.  So this year, I soaked them in a wet paper towel for a full 48 hours before planting:

Oops, some of them are already sprouting!  They’re in the ground now so hopefully I didn’t soak them too long.

Finally, my garlic is all coming up!  Check it out!

It seems quite high for only the second week in April, but I’m not complaining.

One last thing: I’m going to be re-acquainted with the Friends School Plant Sale this year.  I looked at the catalog online and immediately started estimating exactly how much of the lawn I can talk Adam into ripping out…  They have a lot of unusual plants that are difficult to find anywhere else.