More early season prep + garden work schedule
April 18 - Sunny, 65 degrees, windy
April 19 - breezy, 48 degrees, partly cloudy
Peas are up!
I’m posting a bit late on this one…
We had a great weekend - lots of things happened, including plant thinning, mulching, and composting…
We started the day Saturday with thinning…Scott and Carolyn brought up a friend, and we all sat down and started work on the new seedlings, thinning them out.
Initially when you do this, the plants look like pretty small and week - a week later, they look like they’re thriving. Our seedlings really have a good start this year, we’re pleased to say.
Once we had the seedlings thinned and back under the grow lights, we went down to the garden and got to work.
My sister was up for the weekend, and we also had help from Steve and Julia, Lee and David, as well as Scott and Carolyn and a friend of theirs from Brooklyn.
Our focus this week was getting the row dimensions right, tilling the actual row, mulching with newspaper and straw between the rows, and finally putting new compost in each row.
We also wound up with four truckloads of alpaca compost, which should carry us for the year. Shout outs to David and Steve for getting up on the truck with me and shoveling that off…and to Julia and Lee for starting the backbreaking work of laying newspaper mulch and straw between the rows.
Here’s the planting schedule for the next six weeks:
Weekend May 1-2
- Weeding - Blackberries and Calendula row (next to the blackberries/plants are very small!), thistles need to come up (using a spade, to get the roots - they’ve really taken over, gloves will be needed). Also weeding around edges of mulched paths.
- Finishing garden layout in corn section (including using small rototiller), prepping strawberry row, putting in grape posts and grape wire for arbor, mulching between rows
- Finishing composting and garden layout in herb section
- Laying thermal plastic in squash section, completing row mulching
- Removing old plastic, laying new path fabric (and putting straw on top of it)
- Wire hoops to raise row cover off Snap Peas and Arugula
- Laying drip tube in Garlic, Blackberry, Raspberry, and perennial rows (before plants get big) - Garlic needs three drip tubes, lower raspberry section needs two tubes, Blackberries need two new drip tubes - those should be done, remainder can be done Sunday
- Plant second planting of arugula, spicy mesclun, wildfire lettuce (I’ll have a row cultivated and marked for this)
- Start laying out greenhouse plants during the day to harden them off
- Spray apples - organic
- Small row cover - rhubard (getting eaten by something)
- Shed cleanup/prep for planting season
Weekend May 9-10
- Fertilize fruit trees with fish fertilizer
- Move lemon balm
- Blueberries - fertilize
- Planting of strawberry plants, new blueberries, and grapes (due to arrive May 5)
- Turning under composted rows
- Repair of garden wagon (tailgate is broken)
- Repair of raspberry and blackberry fencing
- Potato planting (7 rows) and early hilling
- Early seed planting - late-spring hardy greens and seeds
- Possibly some greenhouse plant planting - kale, chard, beets, which must then be row covered
- Planting - evergreen windbreak by beehives
- Snap peas - trellis
Weekend May 16-17
- Arrival/installation of bees (2 hives)
- Final turning under of composted rows
- Planting of lemon verbena (carry down in ga
- rden wagon w/tractor)
- Drip tube placement once seeds and plants are in, including setup of drip tube system and test
- Major planting weekend - most greenhouse plants, including tomatoes, peppers, brussels sprouts, parsley, purple onions, leeks, basil, if there are no frost predictions for the next ten days
- Removing every other tomato row (hoping the killdeer are hatched by this weekend, that’s why we’re waiting)
- Replacing thermal plastic on remaining four tomato rows
- Mid-May seed planting, including beans, corn
Weekend May 23 and 25
- Alternate planting weekend if frost predictions precluded planting seeds and plants prior weekend
Weekend May 30-31
- End of May seed planting for late production plants, including pumpkins, squash
- Weeding
Week or Weekend June 6-7
- Weeding
Week or Weekend June 13-14
- Tie up tomatoes
- Plant thinning
- Weeding
- Potato hilling (second hilling)
