I couldn't stand it

I spent my lunch hour at the garden center the other day. There is an awesome, local garden center not far from my office. They had asparagus. I couldn't pass it up.

The thought of not having enough asparagus plants was too much. The package had seven plants. I planted three to replace the three that died.

Now I'm thinking I'll plant the other four tomorrow. Just in case.

Brassicas

The little brassica plants have been spending time outside for a couple weeks now, getting ready for life in the real garden.

the windblown look

Tuesday, I was finally able to get them planted.

cabbage

kale and broccoli

I'm not sure if it helps, but last year I started using Liquid Fence to keep the rabbits away. I spray around the entire perimeter of the garden, and I spray each of the plants when I plant them.  I can't believe I'm going to say this, but, even though I've had plenty of rabbits in the garden, I haven't had hardly any damage. Hopefully my luck continues to hold.

In a few days, I'll probably want to spray these guys:

lettuce sprouts

I'm actually looking forward to tasting this lettuce, so I hope these little sprouts continue to grow.

Success and failure already

Transplanted asparagus - 60% failure

I transplanted five asparagus plants last fall. So far, I've only seen growth on two of them. This guy really shot up the past few days, but I certainly won't be eating home-grown asparagus this year.

I'm thinking about buying some new plants to replace the others, but maybe it's too soon to be sure they're dead? 

For what it's worth, I'm still glad I decided to take the asparagus out of the big garden. With spring rain, it's too hard to get into the garden to check on plants, so once I do get plants established in this bed, they'll be much easier to harvest than they would've been in the main garden.

Spring planted garlic - wildly successful

I can't give a scientific success rate here because I didn't count what I planted or what has sprouted, but there are little green shoots all over.

Three shoots

It's not much, but it's better than nothing. I need to get that grass pulled out, but I've been afraid of disturbing the asparagus.

Here's what I'm thinking

Since I moved the asparagus last fall (fingers crossed I didn't kill), I've been trying to figure out what to plant in the bed in between the asparagus plants. There's plenty of room.

With a little help from Carrots Love Tomatoes, I finally settled on tomato plants. It hadn't dawned on me before that tomatoes don't need to be protected from rabbits, so I'm wasting space in the big garden. Not that my fence offers much protection from rabbits, as has been proven time and time again.

At any rate, tomatoes may be beneficial to the asparagus, and will be fine in an unfenced bed (which is how I grew them before I made the big garden), so I'm going to squeeze a few tomato plants into the asparagus bed.

I think I can fit as many as four this year.

With only three tomatoes in the main garden, I have room for more things, like lettuce, sweet potatoes and zucchini.

I planted something. . . outside

In that not-so-straight line between the two poles are some lettuce seeds. Winter Density, to be precise. That's only enough space for four or five heads, but I'm not even sure we'll eat that much if it grows.

In garlic news, I've been checking on it regularly, and have seen two green sprouts.

I figure if two are growing, the other 15 should be, too, so I decided to consider them a loss and planted some more. I've either guaranteed myself some garlic this year, or guaranteed that I'll have too much garlic too close together for any of it to grow well. I might give up on planting garlic in the fall. Two years ago I planted in the spring and that garlic lasted me a year and a half. That's good enough for me.

Seedling update

A couple weeks ago, I started some more seeds, mostly flowers this time.

zinnias

marigolds

tassle flowers left, amaranth right

basil

They all look dried out because I took these pictures before I watered them. It's almost time to thin them already, and I realize I might've put a few too many basil seeds in each cell.

The brassicas are growing well.

They've all been moved to larger pots, and I can tell them apart now, so I don't need my labels anymore.

out of order

I feel like I have so many seedlings, but the truth is, I have so few, I only need one light fixture.

I just have to hang it crooked so they all get the light they need.