Who is SHE and What is She Growing?

Well, I know that my blog is called She Grows a Garden. However, the garden is getting very little action since the chickies and the boys happened since I was on vacation.

The reality is that with all of the rain recently I have not been all that interested in going outside. When it rains here, it is pretty serious and it's also pretty depressing. Even if I were out in the hoop house, which is my happy place, I do get tired of the rain that is just crazy and out of control. What is really crazy is that between October 1, 2016 and April 30, 2017 there were 146 days of rain. It's no wonder I'm tired of all this crazy!

The sweet thing is that this past week though has been fairly decent and over the weekend I started working on getting the garden boxes weeded and ready for something.

Leeks in the first box!

After getting the leafy greens into the next bed on Monday last night I went in and got my pea seeds in and then used up all of my pelleted Bolero carrot seeds from Johnny's. Those didn't seem to work out when I put them in the free range garden, so I thought maybe in the boxes would be best. Also, they needed to be used up. Now I have many short rows of carrots in with the peas.

This year I need to be proactive in the area of protecting the seedlings in the boxes - my peas were all nibbled on last year and that irritated me so much that I just whacked them all down and let them just go.

This morning Tom discovered that the box with the leafy greens seeds had been pawed through...so I'm not sure what I want to do about that. I mean really, I spent the time to FINALLY do something in  the garden and a stupid critter comes along and messes it up. In the past a deer would do a walk through, but this was something much smaller. Sigh. I might just smooth it out and then put something over the top to protect it. I'm not really in the mood to try to defend against some critter that I don't even know is out there.

The boys got to forage in the box that is planted with clover. Leonard was enjoying the greens quite a bit, while Sheldon was actually rooting around under the plants. I am not sure what he found in there, but they were both happy so I wasn't going to deter them.

Next week I'll be taking some vacation time - just working from 0800 to noon and then spending the rest of the day working in the garden at home. For some reason we just keep running out of hours in the day to do things in the garden AND the weekends just whiz by in a blink of an eye. I have vacation time so I should use it! Also, this way I can still  keep up with whatever projects I have going at work and not have to worry about leaving  behind things for others to keep track of.

The best part - I now know what the "free range" garden dimension are and I can start digging out my raised beds. There is enough space for 13 beds that are 30" wide and 20' long with 18" paths in between. That will be the best laid out part of ALL of the spaces that we use for gardening. I have a few items that are Direct Sow and some plants that I can transplant. The tomato plants will be ready for sure! At this point I do not have enough home made tomato cages, but that is easy to fix so we'll get right on that! There are also a few onions that I'll be able to transplant as well - and they need it! So many different things that I can sow/plant and I'm now getting excited to grow my garden!!

 I'm not sure how we are going to plant the front yard yet - I need to get into the seed box and see what I have OR I could plant it all in some that will grow BIG!

OHHHHH....YES!! I just realized that I have Filderkraut seeds!! Those would probably do well in the front yard! Check it out...

photo credit Uprising Organics

Say hello to the Filderkraut (from Uprising Organics). This dude is a conical shaped head of cabbage that has the potential to reach 10 pounds or more! Isn't that crazy?! Last fall I tried a super easy sauerkraut recipe and it worked! However we went through the quart size jar very quickly and I only had one good head of cabbage from the garden. That made me a little sad and I didn't want to buy cabbage at the store. However, once I saw this and the size that it could get to I was sold! Can you imagine...10 pounds of cabbage? Made into Sauerkraut?! Man, I can't wait to see what these will look like when they start to grow!

Additionally, I found this on the Johnny's website:

photo credit Johnny's seeds

This is the Caraflex. I am into this shape for some reason, it's just a unique look and I'm experimenting right now. This might be our slaw cabbage - that would be cool!

Okay, maybe I'm feeling better about the gardening thing. Now that I have more things in mind to get into the garden in the next few weeks. The vegetables will happen - they always do!

How about these two...Little Sheldon just can't do without his pal Leonard.

These two are two weeks old yesterday!