week 6 (04/07/2011)

 

This week has been filled with crazy weather, from 70 degree weather to snow storms!  My Magnolia is starting to bloom and it smells extremely sweet.  This plant is by far my favorite in the garden thus far.  The tulips still have not bloomed but they are getting close!  I can't wait till everything is sunny and warm.  

The raspberries look very healthy and they are sprouting up everywhere.  It kills me to pull up a healthy raspberry plant but I can't have them taking over the yard.  Hopefully I will have a lot of berries this summer.  So far I have four plants and all of them look promising.

I know I just barely posted a picture of my garlic but it looks so good I just had to post another picture.  All of the garlic that I planted is doing great except for the three or four my doggy crushed.  I was so worried last year because I planted them right before thanksgiving and we had a warm spell.  Most of the garlic sprouted right before winter really got started.  This mishap didn't seem to bother the garlic at all and it looks like the harvest is going to be a lot more successful than last years.

All of my pepper sprouts have come up and are doing very well.

This is my second try at okra, hopefully it is more successful than the last.

Here is a picture of some of my tomato seedlings.  These are Roma tomatoes.  I just planted a bunch of them in a container, every other day or so I will make sure they aren't crowded and maybe pull a couple of the seedlings out.  I hope this strategy works out, so far it has but the seedlings are still pretty young.

This week I planted......

ONIONS

CORN

.....and potatoes.  I have never planted potatoes but I'm excited about the process.  Because you have to use a technique called 'hilling'  while growing your potatoes I planted them in deep holes.  The potatoes are covered with about three inches of soil.  As the potatoes grow I will fill the hole with more dirt until a little hill is in the place of the holes.  You have to do this because as the potatoes grow on the stem of the plant, you want to keep them covered.  If a potato is exposed to light it will turn green, If you eat a green potato it will hurt your stomach.  In this picture you can also see my bamboo teepees I constructed for my beans.  The beans are not in the ground yet because I wanted to wait until it gets a bit warmer.  Hopefully we wont have any more huge snowstorms!