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Sunday, June 15, 2014

Raised Bed Take Two

After having so much fun last year (especially with the endless Swiss chard!), I decided to be slightly more diligent this year and map it out.  I added 2-3 inches of new soil to the bed from last year (which I'd pretty much completely ignored since last Fall), as well as 1 bag of leaf compost, 1 bag of mushroom compost, and some Plantone.  I used a combination of leftover seeds from last year, new seeds from Melina (in little envelopes with no directions!), and new seeds from the garden center.

Here's the map:
Green beans on top, like last year; fennel and kale in the second row (new this year); Swiss chard in the third row, like last year; and radishes and carrots in the fourth row.  As this was about as much organization as I could handle, I didn't pay too much attention to how I put the seeds in.  I planted everything from seed on May 3, 2014, and this is what it looked like two weeks later (May 17):



Here's what it looked like two weeks after that (May 31).  Still nothing edible, but looks good!



Here's what it looks like today (June 14):


So what have we had to eat?  A few pathetic-looking (perhaps last year's seeds?), but very tasty radishes, and that's it!  In my desperation, I actually found a recipe for radish leaf pesto so we could eat something from this gorgeous bed.  Other than that, the bean plants have lots of little flowers on them, and no beans--not sure what that means.  It looks like something must be going on under the soil where the fennel and the carrots are (I hope the bed is deep enough to support them).  Some kale leaves have come up, and it looks like the Swiss chard is slowly on it's way ( I think last year's was much more productive, but we'll see. . . ).  I think I'll add some more Plantone and call it a day. . . 

I welcome any feedback/suggestions!  Sharon

1 comment:

  1. Many gardeners and farmers experienced a slow start this year. The plants, even those started indoors, sensed the lengthy, cold winter and took their own sweet time to come up. Some earlier plants which don't like the intensity of the summer may not have had time to grow this year as we went from cold to hot pretty fast.

    I hope you found those instructions for the little brown envelopes of seeds generously donated to Guerrilla Gardening by the Newark Conservancy and that your garden is now flourishing.

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