2012 Summary and 2013 Beginning

A lot of things happened in the garden last year.  Unfortunately, not a lot of it got recorded in the blog.  I would definitely say, though, that it was the best year yet.  We got tons of strawberries, leeks, onions, and tomatoes.  We even froze a bit of broccoli and peas.  There were lots of other things harvested as well, but no extra to save.  Unfortunately, the raspberries were taken over by weeds and didn't do more than leaf out.
I also managed to have a small fall garden last year.  The peas and greens didn't do that well, but we did have a lot of lettuce, which was nice.  I ended the year by planting  a half bed of garlic (Spanish Roja).

The garlic has been doing fabulous, and I am well on my way to a great crop in the summer.  I planted peas in late February, and the snow peas are about an inch tall now.  However, the regular sweet peas didn't really come up.  This packet of peas has had some problems even when I bought them last spring, and I have decided (for a few reasons) that I am going to switch buying from Pinetree and now order seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.  This company is managed by a homeschool family in Missouri.  The seeds are closer to me (in the same basic zone), and they are all open pollinated (not Monsanto).  I am very late in ordering this year, but I hopefully will get to that this weekend.

I did order onions and leeks from Dixondale Farms in midFebruary.  The onions and leeks I ordered last year did amazingly well, and I was very excited to order the exact same thing this year.  Unfortunately, I got so busy that I was unable to put them in the ground until yesterday.  Hopefully they were not too dried out and will still grow okay.

I also prepped the bed that the brassicas will be in and bought plants at Ace yesterday.  I really need to work on mulching better, so the weeds don't take over in the winter.  (Although I did manage to cover my allium bed with fall leaves after the garlic was planted, and I covered this year's curcubit bed with black plastic to kill the grass that took over last year.)  My goal for this weekend is to get the brassica bed planted, weed the strawberry bed, and see if there is any hope for my rasberries.