A Garden Update

Appoligies for the lax posting schedule as of late, I've been swamped with work and haven't had as much time for blogging as I would like.  February 28th was a beautful Saturday and despite knowing that the last projected frost for Atlanta is the 10th of April I decided to temp the weather gods and plant some seeds anyway.  It turned out that I had plenty of cold hardy seeds that suggested planting several weeks before the last frost and these are what I concentrated on planting.  I was aiming at filling up at least one of the beds with plants and leaving the second bed for planting my seedlings and some other seeds after the last frost.

Unfortunately I underestimated the amount of spacing that there needs to be in a garden bed.  Sure I can plant closely in a row (I tried to maintain about an inch between seeds but generally failed at that) but when your beds are only four feet wide the six inches to a foot spacing between rows will quickly use up all the space.  I am still surprised at my inability to judge the dimensions required for everything I'm doing.  At first I thought 8'x4'x8" sounded like a small amount of dirt needed, until I actually went to fill it in.  After becoming accostomed to the size of my beds I grossly overestimated the amount of plants I could squeeze into each bed.  I wonder now if this is a common problem for humans, or just specific to me.

In the end I filled up both my beds with seeds, including a patch of red onions that were already several inches tall that my neighbors graciously offered me.  Also planted was:  spinach, arugula, rabini broccoli, mustard greens, several varieties of carrots, swiss chard, yellow onions and some leeks.

Unfortunately I failed to take account for the weather forcast of snow for the next day.  Snow?  Atlanta?  Hah!  Who thinks it could possibly snow in Atlanta in March?  Whoops!

That was just the beginning.  By the end of the day I had several inches of snow on top of the beds that stayed for almost two days.

Luckily the snow seems to have had little effect on the ability of the seeds to grow into small seedlings.  Everything has started to sprout (although the carrots seem to be slow in their emergence) and my only fear has been the robins that like to root around in the beds looking for the nice worms that live there.  The red onions that my neighbors gave me also seem to be doing just fine despite their brush with the crazy Atlanta weather.  My biggest problem now has become weeding.  The choice to mix dirt from my backyard with store bought soil means that I have a decent amount of weeds growing in the beds.  Generally these are easy to pick out since they grow between the rows and I've learned to identify which little green things sticking out of the ground are the little green things I want to cultivate and which ones I want to pick out of the way, but at first it was a difficult job.  I found my self very hesitant to pick anything out lest it actually be something I want to grow, but with some courage and help from google I've pretty much got a handle on what stays and what goes.

I've also made some improvements to the garden.  After filling out the two original beds I decided that I should expand with a third bed of the same design.  The only differences between this new bed and the two originals is the addition of a cardboard bottom.  Due to space considerations I had to place this bed directly over a kudzu tuber.   I cut the tuber down as far as I could into the ground but have little hope that this will dissuade the plant from coming back up (supposedly their roots can be 15 feet deep).  I decided that a thick cardboard bottom will help at least direct the kudzu to grow sideways where I can keep hacking at it and hopefully not have it destroy whatever I plant in this bed.  I also abandoned the idea of mixing some dirt from the backyard with the dirt in the 3rd bed, mostly because I didn't want to dig another hole in the backyard.  Instead I mixed in an extra giant brick of peat moss to help fill out the bed.  The latest thing I've done is adding a layer of mulch around the outsides of the beds.  Already this has kept my pants cleaner since I'm not leaning on the grass and I'm hoping it will keep the grass from growing so much around the outside of the beds so I don't have to mow as much.

Look forward to more regular updates in the future as things start really getting busy.  Its only three weeks till the last frost date and hopefully I can wait till then to start a whole new slew of seeds/seedlings.