The Garden is in!

This spring has been busy and wet. We've had so much rain but I still have managed to put in a pretty good garden. I have all the vegetables planted and much of what I have planted is up. Because of all the wet weather, I planted the garden in raised beds. I made the beds simply by mounding rows of dirt with ditches between them. Now that it appears that it is finally warming up and drying out, I'm applying aged sawdust mulch along the sides of the rows to help keep the moisture in.

I have one twelve foot fence in the garden. It works double duty. On one side I've planted Oregon Spring peas (which are now starting to produce their edible pods).On the other side of the fence I've planted tomatoes. The plan is that when the peas are spent, the tomatoes will take over the fence. The nitrogen set by the roots of the peas (which are a legume)will help add just a small amount of nitrogen to help the tomatoes grow.

In several beds I planted Blue Lake bush beans. I planted about a half a pound of beans two rows to a bed, and between the bean rows I planted root crops--beets and carrots. I hope that the beans will shade the root crops. the small amount of nitrogen fixed by the roots of the beans should help keep the root crops growing as well.

With the warmer weather, I will continue to mulch the garden and I will have to be thinning the carrots and beets as well. Within this week I should be picking the eatable pod peas.