Pickins from the Veggie Garden

It is a happy day when one can finally pick some veggies right out of their garden. It’s been a really slow start to our garden this season. I began my planning in January when I ordered my seeds and started them in March.

Last fall we extended the garden and late winter we put up a fence. We laid a layer of wood chips and rotting hay to compost over it. We planted a dozen garlic cloves too. We soon found that a mama rabbit was chewing right through the fencing. One day I planted some creeping thyme and for some reason pushed back a bit of hay and saw some major animal hair under it. Nestled within all that hair, mama rabbit had nestled 5 twinkie sized rabbits. Oh, and she put them right by the raised bed for the carrots.

This was about the time we wanted to put the seedlings in since they weren’t growing much anymore inside. We tried to put a barrier around the garden to keep the mama out in the future. We kept a small opening so she could get to the kids. But she was still getting in from spots we didn’t want her to get in from. This meant breaking down and buying chicken wire which I wasn’t very happy about. Then one day all the rabbits were gone from the nest, much earlier than we thought.

I then went to work making little ditches of garden soil I purchased and sewing seeds of lettuce, kale, broccoli, spinach, kohl rabi, thyme, calendula, radish, squash, basil, green beans, and nasturtuim. I also set out the tomato, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, watermelon, cucumber, carrots, and okra. Then we waited.

And waited…..and not much was really going on. Pretty much all the seeds I sewn just fizzled out. The broccoli starters fizzled out quickly. Next was the eggplant. The lettuce, kale, spinach after 3 months are still just tiny little 2 leafed seedlings. We were also pretty worried about the peppers and okra. I had to resew carrots after the starters totally fizzled out. Only a few kohl rabi came up. Not even some of the calendula flowers want to grow. We don’t really know exactly why these crops failed. We thought it was a combination of the seeds getting covered up by mulch. We also found out that a nearby tree gives a lot more shade than we thought. However the plot still gets around 7 hours of sun.

At least we can say that a tad over 50% of the garden is doing alright now. Today I harvested a zucchini and radishes. A couple weeks ago I harvested some garlic scapes. I pickled some, and made a compound butter out of some. The tomatoes, eggplant, and beans have flowered. The squash and cucumbers are just beginning to form. Some of the herbs can be harvested already as well.