Gardening for Granny and the First Plants Go in the Ground

Many of you may know Carol from Annie's Kitchen Garden. Those that do, know her affectionately as Granny. She is one of my oldest garden blogging friends. We both started blogging in 2008, though I think I didn't find her until early in 2009. Most people stop blogging after a few years, but Granny is still going strong. You can just tell how much she loves blogging and loves her blogging friends. Personally I'm thankful she has blogged for so long as she is filled with humor and gardening wisdom. I've been gardening for several decades now, but she has even taught me a few tricks. So when she blogged about being diagnosed with metastatic cancer, my heart just broke. In addition she lost the use of her hand and arm for a while so typing was hard. She thought she wouldn't have a garden at all this year. But her family rallied around her and are coming over once a week to help out so she can have the garden she loves so much.

In addition 1st Man thought it would wonderful if all of Granny's gardening friends could come together and garden for granny on their own blogs. He asked for someone to make a banner so everyone joining in would have a way of showing their support. Gammy Tammy made a beautiful banner which I now have on my sidebar. So this gardening post if for you Granny. I'm sure it will be obvious why I picked this one.

Sunday was just a beautiful day. Usually my family plays MMORPG games together every Sunday. We take an hour lunch break, but last Sunday I requested an extra hour. The weather was great and I needed to turn over more soil and plant. My garden plan has the eastern part of the circle garden only having radishes in it in the spring (transitioning to melons come June 1st). But I found when I did a more detailed plan that my space for lettuce was pretty meager. And I hardly needed the whole bed for radishes. So I figured I could put the earliest lettuce in this bed. I'm pretty sure I can get it out by June 1st.

I grew four types of lettuce for transplanting. The Red Sails I bought myself so that is pretty boring. But one year I was doing lettuce trials and gardening bloggers from all over sent me seeds to try. One of them was Granny. She sent me Paris Island seeds. I've grown them every year since. And collected seeds from them and grown them again. Two other seeds, Deer Tongue and Little Gem came from Dan in Canada. I've also grown them every year and collected seeds. Well this year both Dan and Granny didn't have seeds for Little Gem and wanted to grow it. So I mailed some off to them earlier this year. I'll be happy knowing each time she has a salad with Little Gem this year she will be eating seeds I collected.

So I fertilized the soil and loosened it up. I don't really turn my soil over, but I do aerate it with a garden fork. Then I planted out three plants from each of the ones mentioned above. On the other side of the bed I planted radishes and salad turnips. The turnips are an experiment. I usually plant them under my Michihili cabbage and pick them over time. They don't all come ready at once like radishes tend to. But will they be ready to be picked by June 1st?. We will see. If not maybe I can work around them.

You may have noticed the netting over the beds. I use row covers of different kinds extensively in my garden. But the first person I ever saw using netting that you would find at a fabric store as a row cover was Granny. I tried it last year with the typical white netting that you can get anywhere. It is about as strong as Agribon (so not very strong), but you can see through it. When I was looking for netting this year in bulk I figured I would get a brown netting as darker colors blend in more, but the green offered was a little too dark. At less than $1 a yard, it is cheaper than Agribon. It also doesn't hold heat like Agribon will, which is a positive or negative depending on the use. It also more easily lets rain through(a positive) and wind through(a negative) . When it rips it is much much easier to sew shut again. However it does stretch weirdly over time. And yes I do need a row cover over the radishes as otherwise the root maggots destroy them.

This is the view out of my kitchen door. Doesn't it look so much nicer than Agribon? Thanks for the idea Granny. The netting is so see through I wasn't sure the dog would notice it fast enough to avoid it when running around the garden. So I left up the string (which I have on all my beds) to remind him the beds are off limits.

Before

I wasn't sure if I had time to get another bed done, so instead I cleaned up my herb circle in the middle of the circle garden (and why I call it the circle garden).

After

OK so you can't see a lot of difference. But I trimmed back a lot of the dead parts on my rosemary. I trimmed back the oregano and both of the thymes. The English thyme fared pretty well, but the French theme is mostly dead. When new growth starts up, I'll probably have to trim even more off of it. French thyme is my favorite thyme, but English thyme is more reliable. This is why I have another patch of French thyme elsewhere in the garden. As with my rosemary I like more than one just in case my main plant dies on me over the winter.