Veggies By Morning

Now that we are back from our family jaunt to Williamsburg, VA, it is time to begin the spring gardening in earnest.

I still have a bit of clearing to do in my small raised bed garden.  I left some of the tomato vines up, tangled in the trellis over the winter, because I just could not get them pulled out without stretching the netting.  They need to be threaded out and composted now that they are dry and (hopefully) easier to handle.

We started our little garden last year as a project for The Peanut and I, mostly as a sneaky way to coax her into eating more veggies.  She loved growing and picking them...but we are still working on the eating more veggies part of it.

It's a little Square Foot Gardening project, not very large but nicely productive for our needs.

We got a whole lot of tomatoes, green onions, Swiss chard, and other assorted veggies out of it last year.  I'm hoping we'll do better this year now that I have a better idea on what did well and what was a craptastic failure.  (I'm looking at you, eggplants.)

It's an 8x4 plot, with some trellis netting suspended on galvanized electrical conduit pipe at the back.
 

Got the trellis construction idea from the book and it worked wonderfully, especially since I was able to find pre-cut, threaded conduit pipe at my local Lowe's last year and nylon trellis netting, too.  I sunk some rebar rods deep into the ground to anchor the pipe, and it lasted through every nasty windstorm last summer and fall with no tipping whatsoever, even with heavily-laden tomato vines.

I also planted several hills of zucchini as foundation plantings around our front porch entrance last summer, and they kept us and all of our neighbors well supplied.  Zucchini -- all squash, really -- have leaves that are structurally intriguing on sturdy, upright but spreading stalks, so they made for lovely plants with gorgeous yellow blossoms by the house.

It has been warm here, so I can work the soil a little earlier than usual for our neck of the woods.  Am hoping to get some peas, onions, chard, lettuce, radishes and carrots going this week.   And maybe a little broccoli.

But it's always a race between how much I can do and when my hands stop working well on any given day.  Here's hoping for a few days of good weather and good hands for at least long enough to get some seeds into the ground this week.

If not, there's always next week...

(Vibrant carrot shot via CCHarmon.  You can almost taste their fresh sweetness, can't you?  Zucchini plant photo via eugene.)