Spinach and carrots

We harvested spinach and mesclun greens this past weekend! 8 weeks after we planted our first row of seeds. Now is a good time to update the activities of the past two months as best as I can remember them.

We started out with finding a huge stone just below the ground on the left end of our plot. After a few attempts at digging under the stone and lifting it out, we realised it was far too big and heavy for us to do anything about it. So we left it as a welcome stone to our plot deciding to do something about it once we had exhausted the rest of our plot with vegetation. That time hasn't come yet, but it might soon!

We had to rework our original garden plan a bit in light of the huge stone. We leveled the portion adjacent to the stone area and planted rows of spinach and carrots as our research had shown us that these were supposed to grow well together. We followed the instructions on the seed packets which said that we could sow the seeds close together and then thin them later once the sprouts came out. We waited for days and days before we finally saw hints of tiny leaves on the ground. When they were about half to one centimeter high we asked a fellow gardener to help us identify these leaves.

Lesson one: The saplings with leaves growing symmetrically at the same height were spinach and the asymmetric ones were grass. To our great joy, there were some spinach-like saplings coming out. But of course, as we would continue to find later, there were many more weeds. We were advised to let them grow up to a few cm high before deweeding. We did not see any carrots for a long long time. I don't know why but they just did not grow at all despite our having followed the instructions on the packet. Maybe the height wasn't right or there wasn't enough sunlight.

The following weekend we bought some onion bulbs and seed potato. And a week later, during the last weekend of April we planted ten onion bulbs. In the first weekend of May we planted the second patch of onions having seen the first ones do okay. We also put in mesclun greens on the same patch. After the lack of success with carrots and scattered success with spinach, we decided to place the seeds an inch apart carefully as it said on the packet. On the other end of the plot we put up supports and started beans and snowpeas from seed. In the meantime, at our homes we started growing okra (which germinated remarkably quickly in my 'greenhouse') and tomato and basil (from seed and from plant cuttings from my old plant). Around the same time we made a nice potato patch.

It is now ten days into June. All except three onion bulbs out of the twenty survived and seem to be growing well. The row of mesclun greens is full of healthy plants. There was just one plant whose leaves were eaten by insects which other gardeners thought was a weedy variety of mustard, but we think is arugula. These plants grew at exactly the same spot where we had sown the seeds. And the pictures on the internet match our plants. Unfortunately we uprooted all of these, so we will have to see how to fill those gaps now. The potato plants are growing well. It gives us heart to see that the leaves are being eaten by tiny black insects, which means that the plant is probably healthy enough to be eaten by them. This in under the assumption that insects don't eat diseased plants. :) Anyway, we have now transplanted our okra plants and tomato plants. We have also reprepared the old zucchini bed to sow some squash seeds. The biggest surprise so far has been the numerous saplings of voluntary tomato plants that have sprung up near our potato and tomato beds.  We moved them and hope that some of them survive to grow into hardy disease resistant plants. Let us see.

Preparations

7 April 2013

Piali and I got our plots assigned this week, and they are next to each other! We visited yesterday and made a map of our garden with a rough schedule for the next two weeks. Lots more research needs to be done as we go along. Such fun!

Today, I weeded a quarter of our plot. It took two people an hour and a half to do that. I am glad for the extra pair of hands (B) we will have next weekend to finish preparing the plot. :-)

In preparation for the growing season, I have been growing a cutting from my basil plant from last year. In two weeks it has grown many tiny roots. Once some of them grow to a few inches long, I will transplant it to a pot and then on to the ground.

2 week old basil cutting that has grown roots.

I dug up and watered two pots, one of which I will use once the basil cutting is ready to be put in soil.

Pots and soil from last year dug up and watered.

I have also started trying to germinate six seeds from my coriander plant from last summer.

2 cilantro seeds to a pellet.

Both basil and cilantro are good companion plants for tomato. It is funny how things that taste good together also grow well together!