Coming Along Nicely

Yet another renegade pansy jumps the line and plants itself just outside the flower bed...

Seeing as today is the last day of May I’d like to give you an update on the plants that are growing so far. As you may or may not remember I’ve already planted potatoes, peas, onions, tomatoes, carrots, beets and parsnips. I have to admit that I don’t know how well the carrots are going to do because there’s only a handful of them that have come up so far and I’ve caught the dogs running through the garden as well as all three cats rolling around in the garden in the spot where I planted the carrots. Clearly they all have issues with carrots.

Below I’ve included pics of some of the plants so far in their growth. Hopefully this will give you an idea as to how well your own plants are growing:


The tomatoes are still small but we’ve had some decent periods of rain over the past week and the overnight temps are staying warmer so they should grow quite a bit over the next 2-3 weeks.


The peas are growing very well and will need to be trellised soon to prevent them from toppling over and blocking out the carrots. I’ll probably just use a really basic set-up of some sticks and twine, nothing fancy.


The beets are coming along nicely and I’ll need to thin them out soon. When I planted them I put 2 seeds in each spot (you never know when you’ll get a bad one in the bunch) so I’m glad to see that they’re all coming up.


Finally the potatoes. These little guys took their sweet time coming up and I suspect that although the soil itself was warm enough, the daytime temps weren’t quite warm enough for them to get growing. Now that we’ve warmed up a bit more they’ve come up quickly and I have to say that potato plants are one of the nicer looking veggie plants, especially when they go to flower. I’ll be sure to take some pictures when they do so you can see what I mean.

The onions are still growing, but most of it is taking place underground now, so I can’t really take a picture of that and the parsnips have come up but are still quite small so I’ll get a picture if them when they’ve gotten a bit bigger.

If you’re wondering what you should be doing now with your veggies my answer is: nothing really. Keep picking out any weeds you find (make sure you pull out the roots too) and be sure to keep them watered. Other than that just let them grow. We’re not into weather (yet) that would be causing diseases to develop nor serious bug infestations so just by maintaining your beds and staying on top of caring for your plants you’re doing everything you can. If you’ve planted something like peas that need to be trellised I would recommend doing that now before the plants get too big and if your soil has poor nutrient levels I would give your plants a good watering with fish emulsion or manure tea on one day and that’s it. Some people dole out recipe’s for cookies, cakes and casseroles but if you need a “recipe” for manure tea just email me and I can pass it along to you.

I’ve also planted my cucumbers and sweet corn this week. I have a love/ hate relationship with the whole corn growing process. For years now I’ve been trying to get a decent crop of corn and every single year something “gets it”. First it was various birds, then it was ants and then some mystery bug and last year I suspect that raccoons and blue-jays were both in on the mass corn destruction. What can I say, I grow tasty vegetables.
This year I’m going (try) to be smart and cover my corn plants...with barbed wire. No, no, I’m just kidding, but I am going to put some type of covering on it. I suspect that my biggest problem will be the raccoons because they have no fear and a paper bag over the corn itself certainly isn’t going to deter them from taking it so I’ll need to think of something sturdy and ingenious.

On that note I’ll sign off so I can try and get ahold of NASA or military engineers to develop some type of Corn Protection and Containment System.