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Tag: vegetable garden

  • Three mistakes we made in our first vegetable bed

    Three mistakes we made in our first vegetable bed

    Our first vegetable bed was a 12-by-24 monument to overreach. Everything we got wrong:

    Too big, too soon

    A 4-by-8 bed done well will teach you more than a 12-by-24 done badly. Half of our first bed went to weeds in July because we could not keep up.

    We bought “good soil”

    A whole truckload of “premium garden mix” that was mostly sawdust and broken dreams. We should have built it ourselves and waited a season. We know that now.

    We planted what we wanted

    Not what we would actually cook. Six kinds of squash. We hate squash by August. Two kinds of beans we never finished picking. The eggplants did nothing. The tomatoes did everything.

    Year two is one small bed, six things, all stuff we eat. So far, perfect.

  • What we planted in March, and why

    What we planted in March, and why

    March around here means three things at once: dirt under fingernails, seed trays on every windowsill, and weather that flips its mood twice a day. Here is what we put where.

    Direct sow

    Peas in the first week the ground unfreezes. Spinach and lettuce a week later — they would rather be cold than warm. Radishes and carrots once we are sure the daytime stays above 50.

    Indoor starts

    Tomatoes, peppers, and basil go under lights mid-March. We have learned the hard way that too-early starts make leggy seedlings and a lot of February resentment.

    What we skipped

    Eggplant. Our season is too short and we are not running a greenhouse yet. Maybe next year. Probably not.

    If we get one week of “oh no it is too cold to put the peas in,” we know we got the timing right.