gardening with kids – monadnock mama

Here is a little garden update for anyone who is interested. Growing everything from seed is an entirely new experience for me. I didn’t realize how long it really takes everything to get going. Last year I bought all started plants, so it seemed like the garden just exploded overnight. Starting from seed requires patience, and faith! Today it rained for the first time in ages , and it is such a relief. I’ve tried to stay on top of keeping the baby plants watered, and they are still growing well and are healthy, but I’m sure they were happy to get a nice big drink from the sky this morning! Not too much to report at this stage, but here’s the latest: the peas are now tall enough to reach the twine lattice — I had to add in some extra rows because my original lattice was too spread out; the kale is doing pretty well, though not big enough to eat yet; the beets all seem to be growing at different rates — the “chioggia” variety seems to be the hardiest so far; the carrots are also finally growing (I’ve thinned everything out since taking these pictures). We also planted some mesclun (mixed baby greens) and Zane planted his radishes, too. I couldn’t believe how quickly the radish seeds germinated — I think we saw sprouts the second or third day! The next step is to decide what to plant in the second raised bed. We’ll definitely do zucchini, but I’d love to hear your suggestions. I think we’re going to do tomatoes in containers this year because of blight and the sheer size of the full-grown plants.

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Oh, man, I am so happy to be writing this post! After an interminably long and brutally cold winter here in the Northeast, Spring has finally sprung. This is our second year having a vegetable garden at our house (you can read about the first year here), and I learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t during the first year. Last year I got kind of a late start so I ended up buying already started plants at a big box store, which really limited my options. This year I wanted to try some new things, and so I decided to plant everything from seed. I printed out this handy planting chart from the UNH Cooperative Extension, which was specifically designed for New Hampshire. I chose some early season vegetables that we really love and bought seeds to plant in one of our beds, with the other bed being reserved for more summertime vegetables. The front bed is now planted with (date planted in parentheses): dwarf blue curled kale (4/15); Calliope blend carrots (4/15); touchstone gold beets (4/18); chioggia beets (4/18); and detroit dark red beets (4/18). Yes, we really like beets. As of today (5/4), everything has sprouted!

We also have the raspberry bushes that we inherited from our neighbor last year. My neighbor said that she usually cuts all of the canes down at the end of the season so that new ones grow up the following year. I was hesitant to do this because at the house we rented when we first moved to Walpole we had raspberry bushes and they were ever-bearers. What that means is that the growing cycle looks something like this: a new cane grows during the summer and produces berries near the end of the growing season; the next year that same cane will look dead at first, but will produce new leaves starting at the beginning of the season and will produce berries in the summer; in addition to the growth on the old cane, the roots will produce new canes, which will produce fruit at the end of the season; the old canes die for good at the end of the second growing season, but the new canes will produce again the following year, when they will be the new “old” canes. That might sound convoluted, but it basically means that if you cut down all of your canes at the end of the season, then you are missing out on an entire harvest. I was rewarded for my caution and patience by seeing lots of new growth on the “old” canes I planted last year so they must, indeed, be ever-bearers. I can’t wait for them to spread out more and produce lots of delicious berries in years to come. [Kind neighbor who gave me the bushes — this paragraph is not meant as a criticism of your method, which is totally fine and works great in areas with early frosts. But, if you want more berries you might be interested in this article.]

Our garden also has a new addition this year: a pea & bean teepee! My father-in-law graciously let me have some of his bamboo poles from last year (yes, he grows bamboo), and I made a pretty darn awesome teepee, if I may so myself. First, I dug a 3/4 circle trench in the ground, about six inches deep, and filled it with garden soil and compost. I left an opening for a “doorway” so that the kids can hang out inside of it when it is covered with vines. Next, Zane helped me trim down the bamboo poles to a standard 7 feet long with a hacksaw (bamboo can shatter if you aren’t careful, so a hacksaw with a fine-tooth blade is the way to go). Then I pushed the poles down into the ground in the trench I dug, about 3 inches or so, and did my best to lash all the poles together at the top. Finally, I wrapped twine all around the poles at about ten inch intervals, all the way up to the top. On April 18th our peas went into the ground, and nothing happened for over two weeks! I was so sad, and pretty sure that the cold weather we had right after planting had killed everything. Thankfully, I was wrong, and little pea shoots finally started popping up about three days ago. Now they’re almost an inch tall and so far they look healthy and strong. I can’t wait to see them fill in the teepee…and I also can’t wait to taste them!

I have lots of plans for this little homestead of mine (no, I do not plan on raising any chickens). There is a crabapple tree growing just over the fence in the backyard which I have been trying to take care of the past few years. It didn’t do much last year, but the year before it had tons of crabapples on it, so I’m hoping for another good year this fall. I also dug up some unsavoury barberry bushes from the side of the garage (ouchy thorns + poisonous berries = no thanks!) and hope to replace them with blueberry & blackberry bushes as soon as I can get my hands on some. I’m also working on some sort of crazy trellis so that I can grow pumpkins vertically. I’ll update all summer long as our garden grows!

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This update is a couple of days late, but with all the rain and just life being busy in general this is the best I can do. So…the garden has exploded. I’m amazed! Our beans sprouted and are really thriving, which makes me so happy. Pole beans are so satisfying to have in a garden because they grow really fast. Also, I finally got the raspberry bush planted in the ground (it is not exactly thriving, but I still have hope!). I noticed that a bunch of my pepper plants were producing buds already, even though they are not very tall (maybe 10 inches?). I read a bit online about what to do, and several people suggested removing the buds so that the plant would put more energy into growing taller. So, I plucked off all of the buds and I am hoping that the plants will grow some more and then try flowering again later in the summer. If I destroyed my chances to have peppers by meddling with the buds I guess that’s a lesson learned!

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Sometimes simple things aren’t so simple. Take, for instance, our vegetable garden. It all started with my parents’s raised beds that they just built this year. They are beautiful. Although I didn’t know where, exactly, I would put them I knew I had to have some of my own. I thought it would be a great summer project for all of us, especially the kids. My parents are always incredibly generous, and they came up on a rainy afternoon and built us some beds of our own.

I picked what I thought was the perfect location. The backyard doesn’t get enough sun to grow vegetables, so I knew I needed to put the beds near the front. I picked an out-of-the-way location on the side of the front lawn, not too near my neighbor’s property. The first major obstacle occurred when the loam delivery guy took it upon himself to be “helpful” and dumped a ton of dirt directly into the beds…which I hadn’t prepared yet. So, I spent that whole afternoon shoveling the dirt out of the boxes, putting down the landscape fabric, and then shoveling it back in. I was pooped.

A couple of rainy days and a week of dance rehearsals and performances kept me from getting anything planted for the rest of the week. Then, yesterday, I finally made it to the store and picked up some already started plants (cheating, I know, but I’m doing the best I can here). Zane and I hauled all of the plants over to the beds, and set them in the dirt where we wanted to plant them. Then, with Zane literally holding the trowel in mid-air ready to dig the first hole, my neighbor came over and started giving me a hard time about where the beds were located. Long story short, in the end Damian and I decided that it was best to move the beds (the situation is complicated by several factors and I’m not going to go into detail). Being a good neighbor means knowing when to fight and when to compromise.

So, last night my whole family came over and helped me to dig up the beds and move them to the other side of the house (I had previously asked the neighbors on that side if it was okay with them, and they were so understanding and supportive, which was wonderful). This morning, Zane and I planted most of what we bought (we still need a little more dirt for the second bed, since we lost some in the move). I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will turn out to be fun for the kids, and we’ll get some yummy veggies to eat, too. So far, despite the obstacles, so good. I’ll update the garden’s progress throughout the summer.