Maggie's Farm: SOWING and RAINING!

Newly Transplanted Volunteer Zucchini

We have both been busy at work and I've been running to So. Cal. more these past weeks so have not had quite as much garden time as anticipated. We have had a couple of days of rain here (and snow in Mammoth). Today it just to spit a little bit on and off most of the day intermixed with lovely sunshine. A good, cool day to work in the garden.

Jim did a lot of work on irrigation in the raised beds as well as some weeding above the garden. I transplanted a volunteer zucchini/marrow from bed 7 to it's new home in bed 3. It looks pretty shocky but these guys are tough. We were so excited to discover this volunteer the other day. Jim has been very worried that we won't have any zucchinis this year and they were such a dietary staple last year. We will plant one or two from seed again, but the ones we planted in the past were nothing compared to last year's monster volunteer "mystery plant" which turned out to be marrow. Looking forward to another feast and zucchini fest this summer.

The sugar snap peas are finally doing pretty well. Oddly this batch of seeds seems to have only about a 60% germination rate - even after soaking. Today I filled in the holes with more seeds (un-soaked this time). Also planted the third row of peas.

Newly planted Bed #7 & #8

I also planted beds 7 and 8 today. Bed 7 has one row each of chiogga red beets, parsnips, carrots, green onion and rutabagas.

This year we are going to try planting short rows in intervals so we have things ripening at different times (in theory). I'm not sure this is really significant for things like beets, carrots, parsnips, rutabegas etc which are so slow growing and good at a variety of sizes. I think it DOES make sense for faster growing crops like lettuces and radishes. My other reservation with this plan is you don't get the same benefit of shelter when the beds fill in.... It is an experiment and we'll see how it goes.
Bed 8 has the first row each of radish, arugula, chard. It also has a block of scatter planted mesclun mix. There is still room for 2 more rows each of radish, arugula and chard plus another block of mesclun mix.