In an earlier post I showed a drawing of my community garden, together with some ideas of what I would grow and where. Here’s a little bit of an update.
The apple trees are in bloom:
The pears have already begun setting fruit, and while late frosts killed most of the plum blossoms, a few have managed to set fruit as well.
I just transplanted corn plants started indoors into bed #4:
Here is a yacón plant in bed #3, next to weed suppressing plastic:
I started the Ulluco indoors, and recently transplanted it to bed #3. It’s an amazingly fragile plant, and it’s still suffering a bit from the shock of being transplanted. To anyone else considering starting it indoors, be sure to start with a large pot as it gets root bound very quickly.
I planted a few Ulluco tubers early, with my potatoes, and that seems to have been a mistake. In spite of a layer of straw to protect against some late frosts, they don’t seem to have survived. Together with these transplants, I have also planted my last few tubers, so we’ll see how they do.
My potatoes are starting to poke through the ground:
The garlic in beds #1 and #2 is getting huge! I’ve already started harvesting spring garlic, yum!
I’ve also been harvesting rhubarb, left behind be the previous gardener. It’s amazing how good home grown rhubarb tastes compared with what you buy in the store. I wonder what they do to store bought rhubarb that makes it taste so bad!
Still to be planted out are some cucumbers and squash to go with the corn in bed #4 and some white Alpine Strawberries to go in the back of bed #3.
The tomatoes are doing well in the greenhouse, but there are too many weeds to take a picture right now. I have taken out a part of the patio and the red currant bed, and have been building some raised beds in their place. I’ll take some pictures of this when it’s a little more finished. In these beds, I’ve already planted celeriac (celery root), Crosne (I’ll post more about this later), some peppers and the asparagus plants. I plant to put swiss chard, beets and beans in other beds in this spot.
I’ve planted some tomatillos next to the garlic in bed #1.
My Belgian friend Lieven also gave me a number of soft fruit plants, and these have gone in on the back side of bed #1 as well as the empty space between the red currant and cold frame in the garden sketch.
I recently planted tubers or seeds of ground nuts, Oca, Mashua and Salsify in bed #3. The Jerusalem Artichoke I planted in the fall in the back of bed #3 has also started coming up.
I planted some peas in the back of bed #4, but they are not doing well. I’m still trying to understand what went wrong there, and perhaps I’ll post some more about that later.
I still have a number of seeds to plant, including those given to me by others I need to say more about. I also have more to say about where a number of the plants I’ve already mentioned came from. I’ll do this in other posts.
The weeds are driving me crazy! In the last few years I was growing on heavy clay, and the size of the garden meant I mostly gave up on the weeds where they couldn’t be mulched. This year I am trying to keep them much more under control, but it’s a lot of work.
The previous gardener let the weeds get out of hand, and many have become very established and there are a lot of seeds in the ground. He also build an extensive network of paths with paving stones, and this has generated a huge problem with the weeds and used a lot of space better made available for plants. I have been slowly taking up these stones, and using them to build the raised beds. I have to do this a little at a time because they are so heavy, and as a result the garden is in a bit of a state of disarray right now.
