Tag Archives: broccoli

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 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.

Weeds From The Winter

This bumper crop of weeds needs harvested.

With the arrival of our seeds, it was past time to assess the condition of the garden. After providing a home to lettuce, broccoli, radishes, and potatoes that over-wintered, a number of weeds decided to take up residence, and while I thought I was keeping them at bay, I was only fooling myself. Now, manual labor was the only way to rehabilitate out precious garden boxes.

Since each bed already had some vegetables growing, the hand cultivator would be my tool of choice. Bent over, kneeling on the ground, sifting through the dirt, and banging as much of the soil from the weeds roots as I could, it took 2 days to recover our 3 garden plots from the clover, spurge, purple deadnettle, and dollar weed.

My daughter chanting “I see London. I see France. I see daddy’s underpants” should have clued me to the fact my shirt was riding high and my pants were riding low. That evening, the sting on my lower back provided a warning from the early season sun. I won’t make that mistake again so easily.

The increasing sunlight and warmer temperatures of early spring have prompted the surviving broccoli to flower.

Right up until the real cold of winter set in, we were harvesting lettuce and broccoli. Both of these survived the mild winter and we are greeted with secondary broccoli shoots beginning to bloom.

In the heat of last year’s summer, we let the lettuce go to seed. As we weeded, we discovered my new lettuce shoots. The children were more than happy to poke their finger in the newly cultivated soil and organize homes for these sprouting plants in a single garden box. Afterwards, the kids would make sure each plant got a healthy sip of water straight from the rain barrel. The water is still frigid considering a week ago it was frozen. By the end of the weekend, we had an entire 6 foot by 4 foot garden plot packed with tender lettuce that came up on its own.

Katie and Emily take a break to admire the finely weeded lettuce bed.

In the photo, you’ll notice the empty chicken wire used to climb our snow peas. This bed was their home last year but we rotate crops between the three beds to help keep the soil healthy and thwart the insects.

You’ll also notice Katie and Emily are sitting on some garden soil we purchased to help top off the beds. It will all be in the garden soon enough.

At the corner of the house, you can see our two rain barrels which manage to stay full even though they only collect rain from a small overhang on a bump out from the kitchen. The barrel in the rear sit on top of two tiers of concrete block which elevates it enough to get our watering can beneath the spigot but doesn’t provide enough water pressure to use a house. The second barrel is destined for a home on the other side of the house.

Two out of three garden plots weeded.

After swinging the cultivator over and over, pulling gently to remove all the rooted weeds, we are winning. There are more food plants than weeds and it should be much easier to maintain the beds for the rest of the year.

Backyard Family Garden

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