May 21- At the community garden, the garlic, onions, and radishes are all coming up. Yay!!! I pulled the burlap cover off the radishes and placed Agribon over these rows. I try to water each time I visit the garden and will apply Great Big Plants liquid compost every other week throughout the growing season.
May 22 – Spinach is up! I took the burlap cover off the row of spinach and extended the Agribon to cover it also. Before replacing the Agribon, I pulled out the temporary support stakes I had been using and replaced them with plant props, which I think will work better. We will peek under the remaining burlap in a couple days to look for new sprouts.
May 25 – The Swiss chard, beets, and peas are now up, but very little lettuce has germinated. I replanted the lettuce row with some “Great Lakes” seeds which Marie had left over from last year. I removed the burlap from these rows and extended the Agribon to cover them.
May 29 – At long last the carrots have come up. Carrot seed is always very slow to germinate. The burlap covers are extremely helpful, as they keep the top layers of the soil constantly moist, even through are strong dry spring winds. Today we did the last of the planting, putting in 2 rows of “Blue Lake” green bush beans, 2 rows of “Pencil Pod Wax” yellow bush beans, 2 hills of “Black Beauty” zucchini, one hill of “Jack-be-Little” pumpkins, and one hill of “Jack-o-Lantern” pumpkins.
I put the three tomato cages back into the pea patch to provide support for the growing peas. After removing the last of the burlap, which had been covering the carrots, I top-dressed all the rows with “Roots” compost and liberally applied Great Big Plants liquid compost to the entire garden. After adding more plant props for support, I placed Agribon over the whole plot. Next week we will need to start thinning our baby plants. The garden is looking great so far!
Contributed by Jim Mast