It’s been a busy spring, not much time to post and just working on getting all the plants pruned/in/maintained.  I have two gardens, one at work and one at work so they’ve kept me hopping. I’m still on the path of planting all the various crops I’d need, and then getting them to yield and produce seed for the next season. And figuring out how to store and process them.

Here’s the highlights:

Berries

I have blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries all in big pots. This is working well so far,  the only difficulties are keeping them watered in the summer and protecting them from pests. Everything else is well-documented on the web, the need for fertilizer and pruning, and various diseases (all which I’ve encountered).  The pests are a big issue, I had to build a wood frame with plastic bird mesh to keep the catbirds out. They take every single mature blue and blackberry, but don’t seem to care about raspberries. That worked for the birds, but I had squirrels wiggle under the mesh and trample one of plant’s canes.  I added a 48″ fence, but they raised that up and did it again, unbelievably. So, they had to go the hard way which I’ll leave to the imagination.  The far left plant has yellow leaves due to the broken canes, grrrrrr…If you look closely, you can make out the black mesh but it’s nearly invisible.

Since using fruit fertilizer, all the plants have borne a heavy crop of berries and I’ve been able to eat them every day as well as freeze enough for cobblers. It is very satisfying, and I’d say if I had room for nothing else I’d grow berries.

Potatoes

Recall I had a few fall plants growing from seed, those all croaked BUT one produced a 1″ diameter tuber than ended up sprouting. This dude is doing well in the wet, cool weather:

It’s a lot leggier than the reds I have at work, but we will see how it yields. I started it in 3″ of soil, then added the rest as it grew. I will probably just see how this one fares before going nuts with the potato tower idea.   Work spuds are rocking, the 8 I planted overwintered and came up in April just fine. In fact they are everywhere, so with luck they yield and I can try to finally save ’em in a mini fridge for fall. I plan on packing them in moist dirt at 40 degrees, that seemed to work great last winter.

Garlic

Last summer I had some grocery store garlic that was sprouting, so into the dirt they went. Big hit, they came right up and overwintered and are huge. I’m anxious to see how the bulbs form, it can be hit or miss but they sure look healthy. There’s bunching onions and Valencias mixed in, those all did well too.  The fence is to keep out the rabbits, which ATE THE ONIONS.

Seed production

The chives finally bloomed (beautiful purple flowers), I got a small quantity of seed which I’ll fridge for the fall. Oregano and celery are forming, so those ought to be ready soon. I think that was everything I planted, it all went to seed but took 2 years in some cases.

Corn

I have 32 Tophat sweet corn plants at work, I got them in early this year and they are about 2 1/2 feet tall. I’m hoping they will produce fully formed ears, I hit them with shots of nitrogen at sowing and again recently. That seems to the be the key, it definitely made the wheat head out.