Raspberries and Strawberries

Today was a big day of hard work in the garden. I started by planting most of the root bed: a row each of early and main carrots, beets, swiss chard, and scallions, as well as a container of parsley. Then most of the day was spent in prepping and planting 25 earliglow strawberry plants and 5 heritage raspberry plants.

The new strawberry patch is in the old railroad tie bed. We dug out most of the old soil, rototilled and then added in mushroom soil. My intent was to plant the raspberries as a beginning hedge next to our fence. However, with all this rain we've been having, it has been too muddy and slick to get the truck around. I figured it would be bad for the roots to be in that much water as well, so we ended up tilling right next to the garden fence. I had also wanted to layer in fall leaves and mushroom soil, but again with not being able to move the truck, that didn't work out. So in the end, we rototilled the soil, planted the canes, and then watered in some Miracle Grow organic liquid fertilizer. It is only 8-0-0 instead of 10-10-10, so I will try to add some bonemeal and stuff in a few weeks.

Brassicas

Thursday, I planted most of the rest of the brassica bed on another freezing, rainy day. Almost everything I had planted previously is up, except the romaine. I think I'm definitely throwing out the romaine seed as it didn't come up last year either.

This day I planted turnips, collards, parsnips, and more radishes and lettuce, as well as 4 packman broccoli plants and 6 stonehead cabbage plants.I have been hardening off the brussel sprouts and broccoli that I planted from seed, so they should go in sometime this week.

Brrr....

Thursday, I started filling the legume bed with mushroom soil, but didn't quite get finished. Friday I up onion, broccoli, and cabbage plants at Ace. Well... this weekend sure took over. A big cold front with major storms came through Saturday, and today it was FREEZING! We actually had rain from Friday night through this morning nonstop. It's very flooded all over this area.

Because of the soaking ground, we were unable to get the truck moved where it needed to be with the mushroom soil. The good thing is that it didn't slide into the neighbor's fence as David tried. Anyway, with that not an option, I decided to start planting what I could. I was able to get a double row of peas planted and all of the onions. In the meantime, David dug out the old railroad tie bed for the strawberries. That's all we could do before we were just too cold. Hopefully, it will dry out enough for us to move the truck over, and we will put the rest of the mushroom soil in the strawberry bed.

On a side note, the mustard and radishes are just coming up. The mustard sprouts look a little sad, and I think that seed may be a bit too old too. I will probably throw that away and start fresh next year.