Category Archives: Garden

Planting Corn and Spying New Seedlings

Corn

My assistant and I planting corn.

It’s time to plant corn but the area we plan to use isn’t ready yet. For now, we’ll plant these seeds in the end of the bed with the snap peas and radishes. This way, we’ll have some plants ready to transplant once we get their new home ready and won’t be a few weeks behind. Kids love planting corn. It’s an easily recognizable seed of good size for them to hold and all they have to do is poke it into the soil. They’ve been helping plants corn since they were two years old.

The Three Sister Plan

Our plan is to use the three sisters method to grow some circles of corn, pole beans, and squash. We’ve tried this before in the garden beds and it takes a lot of room. Growing squash in the raised beds is really a waste of prime growing space because they end up consuming so much space and typically grown out into the yard.

The basic idea of planting these three crops together is that the corn provides a pole for the beans to grow up while the squash fills in a blocks out the weeds. There are also nutrient benefits with the beans fixing nitrogen for the other plants. Once the squash leaves are big enough, they act like a mulch, locking the moisture close to the ground and preventing evaporation.

The last time we grew the pole beans on the corn stalks, the beans outgrew everything and eventually collapsed the corn structure. It looked like kudzu overtaking. However, it was easy to pick the beans so we decided to try again. Now, all I need to do is prepare the area of the yard where we’ll plant these crops.

Seedlings Sprouting

The first vegetable seeds sprouting.

After planting and watering, these’s still always a glimmer of doubt that anything will grow. What a joy to see the tender shoots rise through the soil. On the top left, are the fuzzy tops of our two rows of carrots planted in the deep end of the bed. Below on the left are the scattered broccoli seeds making their appearance. On the right, in the foreground, is a row of little onion hairs. They are planted way too close together but we’ll take care of that when they get bigger. Behind them are the first tiny leaves of new lettuce. This is the first time we’ve planted this variety of loose leaf lettuce but we’ve got two fine rows started.

Planting Peas and Beans

Snap Peas

Two kids plant a row of snap peas while the other takes our picture.

As part of our crop rotation plan, we’re moving our peas over one bed this year. With the soil prepared by mixing in a heaping helping of compost, it’s time to fill the row with snap peas. The kids enjoy planting peas, beans, and corn the most because the size of the seeds is easy to manage. I made us a two reasonably straight rows and gave them each some seeds with a rule of planting then about a hand width apart. We only planted one row today. In about two weeks we’ll come back and plant the second row. This will give us longer supply of delicious peas through out the early summer.

You may have noticed our pea fence previous strung across the lettuce bed. We’ll move it into position between our two pea rows before the plants get tall enough to reach it. The plants always need a little help getting started up the fence because it’s about a foot above the bed. Once they grab hold, I wouldn’t be surprised if the plants end up higher than the fence. Making the fence higher would only make harvesting more difficult.

Bush Beans

What was once an unused flower bed is transformed into a garden bed – the future home of pole beans.

Poking bush bean seeds into the newly prepared bed.

Our garden plan included a number of expansion projects. The first of these is converting an unused, sunny flower bed into a bean patch. In the past, we’ve grown only pole beans but I wanted to give bush beans a try. We’ll still be growing pole beans along with our corn in another area of the yard. I’m not sure how large these plants will grow so we plant a few extra. We can always move them somewhere else if it gets too crowded. The kids can tell you, there’s no need for a row. All you have to do is poke the seed into the dirt, pat it down, and water.

Planting Begins

The first seeds in the ground include bibb lettuce, carrots, onions, and broccoli. We sowed them thick and will thin them later depending on our germination success.

After all the weeding and raised garden bed frame repair, it’s finally time to get some seed in the ground. The planting season is starting a little later than usual. The weather surprised us last week with a cold snap that could have done some damage if we’d had any early seedlings.

First, we prepare the soil by mixing in some of our compost. Just look at the deep, rich color of that soil we heaped at the end of one bed to allow our carrots plenty of depth to grown before hitting the naturally pour clay soil beneath. We’ve yet to have much success with carrots. Last year, we had some beautiful, thick greens cascading over three feet high. The carrots were grotesque in comparison. We only salvaged a half dozen and some of those were hollow inside. We’ll consider those previous results a learning experiences. I have high hopes for our carrot success this year.

We call this our salad garden. The bed will hold our previously transplanted lettuce that came up on its own, a new variety of lettuce we’ll be trying, carrots, and onions. Each child gets a chance to distribute the tiny seeds. We’re not too worried about spacing the seeds out because we can always thin the plants later. It’s better to plant a few too many than be disappointed with the bare spots left by seeds that fail to germinate.

When it comes to planting, everybody gets a turn to sprinkle the seeds, cover, and soak them in.

Everyone loves filling the sprinkle cans from the rain barrel and giving the newly planted seeds a well deserved drink. We try to set ourselves up for success by providing good soil, in a well lite area. Letting water soak in deep encourages deeper, healthier roots to support and nourish the plants. We’ll continue to water every day until we see seedlings poking through the soil and then cut back depending on the spring rains.

We have another entire garden bed devoted to potatoes and broccoli. Two broccoli plants that survived the winter still live there but the will go to seed some. It’s unlikely we’ll see any more sizable heads form. To keep them company, we sprinkled enough seed to give us a dozen or more new plants. Meanwhile, the potatoes we left in the ground are sprouting. It will be exciting to find out what’s been going on underground.

Our compost attracts lots of lively worms.

Since we moved in, we’ve kept a compost pile for yard clippings. We decided to add kitchen scraps and now, with the recent addition of a pet bunny, we’ve include the missing ingredient from our compost. Digging up a bucket full to spread in the garden showed us the quality of soil by revealing colonies of plump, well-feed worms. The kids can’t resist the way the cute little worms tickle their hands and they help redistribute these wiggly fellows to a new home among our future vegetables.

Backyard Family Garden

A backyard adventure full of plants and animals