Garden update: April

April was an interesting month for the garden.  We put dirt in the new beds, planted a bunch of seeds, planted some little tomato and pepper plants, and transplanted some strawberries.  As far as the seeds go, things are great, but I think I planted the tomatoes and peppers to early, even though I made myself wait.  Oops.

I spent a Saturday morning weeding the strawberry bed and transplanting some of the newly-formed plants to our second (new) strawberry bed.  Maybe I just don’t have a gentle-enough touch to transplant things, but most of those strawberry plants died.  Oops again.  Luckily there were plenty more where those came from, so the second time around I dug deeper and wider to ensure I had as much of the root structure as possible.  As you can see, some of the transplants still look brown and sad, but they’re not wilted and 100% dead (like the first transplants), so I’m hoping they’ll soldier on.

We have snap peas and green beans going strong in the trellis bed, and I’m still waiting for the watermelon and pickling cucumbers to sprout.  We have two zucchini bushes starting to form, some regular cucumber bushes and some little okra seedlings.  So far the beets don’t look promising…. I poured in like half a seed packet and only three little plants seem to be doing well.  The carrots are starting to take off, and now I’m busy thinning them.  The radishes are really starting to grow, and hopefully we’ll have arugula and other greens in a few weeks! Here are the snap peas growing strong:

We got about half a pound of asparagus from the garden this year.  It would have been double that, but it was perfect for picking while we were in Guatemala, which we discovered when we came back.  Oops, for the third time.  At least this will give the roots a chance to keep growing.  A number of people have asked why we’re growing trees in our garden beds and they have all been confused when we tell them it’s asparagus.

At least I was able to get a couple of yummy meals with our garden asparagus!

As for a financial break-down, we’ve spent $198 on our garden beds and supplies (dirt is expensive!) this year, and we’ve only harvested 1/2 a pound of asparagus, which wouldn’t cost much at the farmers market.  We are solidly in the red.  Hopefully things will turn around when the weather is more consistently warm.  Strawberries, I’m counting on you!

Saving the best for last, the big news around here is that we finally got a new fence.  Our old chain link fence was looking kind of ghetto and we decided to just bite the bullet.  The company that we went with, Loudoun Deck and Fence, did an amazing job (they worked for ten hours straight, pulling out the old chain link and putting up the new fence, all in one day) and we would definitely recommend them!  Also, if you’ve ever wondered about joining Angie’s List, do it.  The discounts you get make up for the cost of joining (around $40) and you know you’re picking a good contractor!