Greening up

Spring has been a busy time here at the ranch. That’s understandable, given that our growing season starts early, and we’ve been working to get things in shape to actually grow things this year rather than struggling with the soil, such as it is, which will take years for me to build up organically.

We had started off with a couple of rows of frames: getting them built, filled, and planted. March 19:

Garden in March

The front of that frame second from the right has the snow peas, along with carrots and some herbs. We were still in the process of mixing and filling the built frames and putting together more.

As of early April, the peas were starting to take off – as was everything else, in fact, given the much healthier soil. April 2:

Garden, April 2

In mid-April on one weekend, my brother and his son built the rest of the frames out for me while I prepped the area that would hold our experimental frames for corn. The already-planted items continued to fare very well. April 13:

Garden, April 13

I laid down weedblock in the new frames and my brothers finished filling them while I was at the NOC one day. The snow peas were finally at the point where they needed to be picked (past due, really). The catnip had gone bonkers and I did a little massacre on it (it has not seemed to care much), and I pulled the entire bunch of thyme up and dried it, then planted new from seed in the same square from which I had pulled it. The carrots are doing incredibly well – that is the frilly green stuff on the right, and in the front is several basil plants. April 27:

Garden, April 27

The first snowpea harvest, steamed that very evening.

Snow peas, April 27

The other things that have been planted/transplanted in have taken off with the warmer weather, regular watering, and available nutrients. May 4:

Garden, May 4

The snow peas continue to be productive, and need to be picked again tomorrow.

Snow peas, May 4

The additional strings running from the frame to the right are for runners that refused to go up the trellis. Since it’s difficult to get the plants to cooperate in one fashion, I’ve given them another direction to run so they’ll continue to put out pods without lying on the ground. The only other issue we’re having at the moment is a good one to have: the peas are climbing higher than I set the trellis. Next time we’ll know that just over five feet is not quite enough.

This is a front view of the frame with the snow peas, carrots, basil, catnip, and lavender.

Frame: peas, carrots, basil

More to come as things keep growing along.

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