Garden Maintenance + Salad Harvest + Spinach and Garlic Planting…

It was a really nice day today and I got to do some gardening and maintenance in my front yard veggie garden.

If you didn’t know yet, I’m concentrating most of my vegetable planting in fabric pots (GeoPots, Dirt Pots, Smart Pots, etc.) in our front yard. I experimented late last year with a few GeoPots and the veggies grew really well… some, a lot better than the ones in the back yard Square Foot Garden. I think it’s because there is full sun in our front yard, whereas our back yard gets a lots of partial sun.

Almost all of the Flowering Kale and some of the Mizuna and Mustard were infested with gray Aphids (yuck), so I pulled those plants out, since they were not doing well. Two pots with the Curly Leaf Kale looks really healthy and are starting to get bigger, but I noticed that the young leaves in the center also had the gray Aphids! So I got a pump sprayer filled with just plain water and blasted the Aphids out. I’ll check the Kale in a few days and repeat if I find more Aphids.

I did some maintenace and took out some of the older dead leaves from the Collards, Bok Choy, Lettuces and Onions. I also put some bark chip mulch in the veggie pots that didn’t have any.

I harvested a bunch of greens for a big salad for the family: Romaine, Red Oakleaf and other Lettuces, Mizuna, Curly Leaf Parsley and a few (spicy) Red Giant Mustard. Yumm! We had so much salad and it was so good. I also harvested a few small Snap Peas.

My Mom saves Green Onion bottoms (with root) from the kitchen and later plants them in the garden. We had a few on the kitchen window sill, so I took those and planted them in the empty spots in one of the 7-gallon GeoPot that has Red Onions. I planted carrot seeds in half of the pot back in the fall, but they either didn’t germinate or died. I also realized that I had some Shallots that I purchased a while back and never planted, so I divided those and planted them in the same pot.

As the sun was setting, I planted two 5-gallon fabric Dirt Pots, each with four Spinach ‘Bonnie’ plants. There seemed to be a bunch more space in the pots, so I planted the young Elephant Garlic in cell-packs that I had left over from last year’s fall planting. It was getting dark, so I’ll much these with compost then bark and place the pots in the front yard.

A Day in the Front Yard (and Our Neighbor’s Backyard)…

Contrary to what the weather-forecaster said, it didn’t rain and was actually a very nice day. I took advantage of sun and did some yard work in the front yard.

Our House(s)

Our house is the white one on the right and that’s our front yard. The tan house on the left is the one I’m planning to buy.

I wanted to see how backyard looks after the rains, so I took Kelly (our dog) and my camera and went to our neighbor’s house to check it out. I took more photos and I’ll post those later.

It was filled with weeds and parts of the yard had standing water. Once I buy the house, I think the first thing I have to do is build a drainage canal or something like that. The yard was not as big as I thought it was, but it’s still a good size. Seeing it in person is totally a different experience than seeing photos of it.

I also took advantage of the nice weather and set up a little work area on the grass to plant the Coleus that I ordered. I’m using 18 oz. SoloGrips drinking cups as pots.

Coleus Workarea

It think this might be the first time they got be out under the sun. Until we get warmer weather, I’ll bring them out during the day and back in during the evenings.