Planting the Vegetable Garden

 An obstacle course?  No, just the garden on May 14th

Once the garden construction was complete and the beds filled with black gold, I felt like Spring was almost gone and I'd missed the mark on planting time.  All along I'd imagined having the cooler temp veggies (peas, beans, kale, collards, salad greens, etc) direct sown in the garden sometime in early April.  When the calendar pages flipped to May and the garden beds sat with just compost in them, I was worried I'd missed the ideal planting times.

 May 6th- Winter Squash & Marigolds

Once May 6th arrived, I wasn't going to wait any longer.  The seedlings had spent plenty of warm days and cool nights outside that I felt they were ready to live in the garden. Night time temps were steady in the 40's and hadn't dropped to freezing in a couple of weeks. 

May 6th-- Acorn & Spaghetti Squash plants

I only planted a few seedlings in the ground that day.

May 6th- Cucumbers on the left, Summer Squash on the right

May 14th- Winter Squash, Marigolds & Mesclun seeds planted

A week later and the winter squash plants are happy & growing.  I decided to plant some mesclun seeds at the empty corners.  By the time the squash plants overtake the beds, the temps will probably be too warm for the lettuces & they'll be pulled out.

May 14th- Cucumber, Summer Squash & Marigold

May 14th- Peas, Bush Beans, Lettuces, Swish Chard, & Endive seeds were direct-sown

May 14th- Cabbage in the far end, cauliflower in the middle & broccoli in the foreground

I had some issues with the broccoli seedlings, so I only ended up with 2 plants to start with in the garden.  As of this posting, I have a few more seedlings ready to be planted and will try direct-sowing a few more seeds and see what happens.

May 14th- Giant Red Mustard is growing well

May 14th- Cinderella Pumpkin in beginning to take off

May 14th- Squash

May 17th- A baby Cinderella Pumpkin

May 17th- Mesclun seeds have germinated

May 17th- Radishes have sprouted

Even though I may have missed my original planting schedule, it still wasn't too late to plant.  In fact, it may have been best to wait.  We had a lot of rain in April and if I would have planted the seeds as early as I'd like to, they would have been washed out or may have rotted in place. We had "just enough" rain in May.  It would rain a little and then would be sunny for a few days.  On dry days I'd water the garden a few times a day to keep the soil moist around the seeds until they germinated.  When it did I'd worry about powdery mildew (and still do a little) on the squash, but I haven't seen any signs of it yet. 

There's more garden planting & growing updates for May.  I plan to post those tomorrow and hope to get caught up so I can stay current in June.  

Thanks for reading, check back for more planting & harvesting!