Sometimes good things appear out of nowhere, right when you most need them and least expect them. Sometimes they appear in the form of a giant dump truck filled with excess organic compost just looking for a home. That was the case a few weeks ago, when our (usually detail-oriented) friends accidentally doubled the calculation for the amount of compost they needed. Lucky for us, Ronald and Jessica are short on math skills and long on generosity, which is how we ended up running wheelbarrows full of free organic matter to all of our vegetable beds. Time for some planting!
Patting the winter squash mounds
In the first bed, we planted two kinds of squash. French Pumpkin (Cinderella Bush) is good for smaller spaces with its compact vines. We planted it 7 seeds per hill, in two hills. We’ll thin it when the plants are about 4″ tall, down to 3 plants per hill and it’ll be mature in 100 days.
We also planted acorn squash in the same bed – a compact, heavy yield variety that’ll be ready in 82 days. (There is something SUPREMELY pleasing about patting hills of soil after you’ve planted some seeds in them. Give it a try.)
Check out how beautiful these scarlet runner beans are! We put these in their own bed. They grow eight to twelve feet tall, and our bamboo tepees are clearly not that high, but we’ll cross that bridge when the beans get to it. In the meantime, we’re looking forward to growing these for the first time.
Scarlet runner beans – pretty!
Not totally sure what’s going on here with Francis, but she loves supervising garden days. And she’s very good at it.
Just some bamboo, nothing to see here
We also planted up a bed with two rows each of yellow squash and delicata, both of which will be mature in 50 days. And, how could we not go with the classic bed of beets and carrots? Beets and carrots are the gift that keeps on giving. You should thin them when they’re a few inches tall, which is a great time to eat the beet greens. And then, we’ll plant some more in July, so we’ll have a rolling harvest well into September. Delicious!
The Calm Before the Food Storm
And there’s something zen (or nerdy) about drawing this all up in our little garden notebook. It’s such a great way to keep track of what needs to be thinned when, when we should be harvesting, and figuring out what to plant next.
Crafty book drawings
What are YOU planting this month? Any suggestions of things we should try?
Related articles
- March Planting in Seattle: The Seeds are Sprouting! (seattlefoodshed.wordpress.com)
- April Harvesting and Vegetable Garden Update (seattlefoodshed.wordpress.com)
- Seed Saving From Your Garden (farmfoodieandfitness.com)
Love your gardens! I need to put in a garden path with bricks or something – hubby says I’m ruining the grass down by the vegetable beds! I’ll be posting my garden update tomorrow. i’m done planting for the season – we were lucky in Ohio with a warm start to the growing season!
Thank you! Yes, garden paths are so great for wheelbarrows, and keeping weeds at bay, and providing dog running trails. We’ve used a combination of wood chips, river stones, gravel and paving stones. It has a fun cottagey look, we feel. Looking forward to reading your garden post!
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