Summary
Originally Posted: 2020-05-06
The greenhouses are planted! Attention is turning to the outdoor gardens, some planting done there as well. This year with food shortages gardening became more than just a side activity.
In the past growing some vegetables has been a past time, a nice to have instead of a necessity. This year is different, as we enter the Great Depression of the ’20s as it is being labelled, food is becoming scare. I would have never thought that in North America having a successful garden may determine how well you eat. Nothing man made feels the same, but the sun shines, the skies are blue and rain is plentiful this is the new normal.
So as you can tell by this article I am not an expert gardener, but over the last several years I have “played” with gardening, it was a nice to have, this year for the first time I feel it is a must have. So with lots of reading material and fingers crossed I head out to the garden.
Two Greenhouses fully planted
The two greenhouses that I have written about in other articles are now fully planted and the temperature significantly higher inside than outside. So far it seems to be going well, the plants are starting to show their heads in the ground. Only time will tell how well those efforts have gone as right now we are essentially just watering twice daily.
Outside garden
My attention has been on getting the outside garden ready to plant. The outside garden consists of 5 raised beds and this week I focused on two.
The garden bed was not used last year, so it required a lot of work. Mother Nature reclaims her own very quickly. However if you ever try to get grass to grow where you want it to, forget it! 🙂 So about an hour of weeding and pulling grass and then added a couple of cow manure bags and finally two buckets of dirt with the tractor from the mushroom compost dirt I bought. Out comes the rototiller for the second time and its ready to plant.
This bed was planted with potatoes which at this time of year are good to go as frost won’t be an issue. Two weeks from now that threat should be over for the year. I’ll know in a month or so how the plants are growing but it will take about 4 months or so until it is time to harvest what I hope will be many pounds of potatoes.
The second bed will hold a combination of green pepper plants and Spanish Onion. Remarkably these are companion plants. Today I planted the Spanish Onion but it will be several weeks before the peppers join them. I planted 4 rows, each row has about 20 onions in it. The peppers have been started in another small greenhouse used only for seed starting.
The other 3 garden beds aren’t started but are covered with tarps still in hopes of killing the weeds and grass before I need to plant.
Well that’s it for now, if you haven’t started a garden I would encourage you to get one going as soon as possible. Even apartment dwellers can use their balconies, just look at what has happened in Caracas Venezuela.
Stay safe…