Seedlings are coming up…

The chives are blooming…

And the beds are starting to look more like a garden than a dirt box…

I’ve planted over 100 ground cover plants along the pathways to try and maintain the ability to use them. Last year the clover and wildflowers grew so tall that we could hardly walk in some areas. I couldn’t resist the flats of 18 from Costco for $14.99 a piece. Hopefully they spread quickly and challenge the grass and clover.

Thanks to two friends, I now have some freebies in my garden. One friend had extra starts and gave me three zucchini and one crookneck squash, and another had spare raspberry canes  she was willing to part with. I have 5 tomatoes waiting to be planted, I plan to buy and plant cucumber starts this weekend, and I have a couple of succession plantings left of staples like spinach, but at this point most of the initial work is complete.

Next came the weeding, which involved loosening the dirt and trying to make sure each and every last grass root/rhizome was pulled so it won’t keep spreading. So far, only a small area around my little meadow is done; there is a lot left to do. Finally, the frenzied purchasing of ground cover flats to install in the weeded areas, especially around the edges of the garden where the grass seems to encroach constantly. Hopefully these will actually spread and be able to hold off the enemy grasses.

As I was weeding, I found some friends in the dirt:

It turns out these are cutworms, which will potentially eat my seedlings as they come up and wreak havoc with my garden. They will be going in a bucket of soapy water from now on…

I also spent two hours weeding; no matter what I do the grass encroaches!

Today I made a trip down to the Farmer’s Market and picked up starts for red russian kale, savoy cabbage(an impulse buy), bok choi, and peas (another impulse buy).

The garden at the Farmer’s Market is gorgeous right now; the tulips are blooming along with a lot of other flowers I don’t know the names of.

And of course I can’t forget the ferns…

The first bed will have spinach, lettuce, chives, beets, kale, chard, sage and carrots.

The second bed will contain short peas, bok choy, tomatoes, zucchini, bush beans, leeks and carrots.

The third bed will house tall peas, pole beans, cucumbers, and one more tomato.

Of course, the fourth bed is fully planted with garlic and won’t be harvested till later in the season. I have absolutely no idea what’s going in it once the garlic is harvested…

Since the garlic won’t be ready for harvest until this fall, I’m left with only 3 beds to plant this spring. After growing a variety of food plants last year, my boyfriend and I have a much better idea of what we want from the garden and what we’re happy buying from the Coop or Farmer’s Market. Our favorites from last year that are sure to be included this year are peas, cucumbers, spinach, beans, squash and tomatoes. Herbs will also definitely be planted; however they will mostly be on the patio in pots. There are a few left overs from last year that I’m letting grow: sage, chives, leeks, and a couple of onions I must have missed last year.

I’m already behind; we had such a warm winter since the first of the year I imagine I could have probably planted spinach in January and be eating it by now. I just fertlized two of the beds this past weekend in preparation for planting spinach, peas, and beans later this week.

I think I’m going to relax a bit with the diagrams and just do rough sketch before putting seeds in the ground this year. One year of experience makes me less OCD about it this time around!

In the bottom right you can see a summer squash, and between it and the eight ball is a delicata squash, with a silvery sheen to its leaves that may or may not be normal.

And the entire end of the bed is covered with cucurbits! Note the prolific cucumbers on the veggie cage, next in line to take over the world.
The final product:
I’ve started working two days a week at a local garden store, which is feeding my addiction and giving me the opportunity to learn a ton more about gardening in Olympia. I’ve talked the store owner’s ear off, and have started reading Steve Solomon’s Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, which I scored at Orca used for $12. I’ve already started planning a winter garden, and have seeds ready to go for the first round of planting once I spend some time clearing out stubs of some of our eaten produce.
So far, we’ve harvested two heads of cauliflower, a ton of kale and joi choi (bok choy), some small broccoli heads (I think the result of my intensive, tight packed garden), more lettuce than we can eat, as much spinach as we could get before it bolted, and a green pepper that fell off in my hand prematurely. Coming soon: more tomatoes than we know what to do with, enough cucumbers to choke us, some (hopefully full sized) green peppers, a couple of eggplant if we’re lucky, and cantaloupe if we’re really really lucky.