Planting the Garden! It Happened!!

So yesterday was the first day of summer vacation.  I let the kids sleep in, then hauled them out to the garden to help me plant (actually, they came willingly)!  The weather warmed up to almost-just-tshirt warm, which is more than we've had since last summer.  We had 90 potatoes to put in, which was 4 1/2 rows, then a couple rows of onions, a double row of carrots in a raised bed, a double row of spinach (double rows are where we plant 2 rows, one on each side of the string with no walkway between), and a row of kale.  I threw some kohlrabi and radishes in on the end of an onion row.  I always like broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower, but I didn't have any starts, and those are touchy ones to grow when we're off traveling (put covers on them, but then they get too hot and die, or else they get too dry and die.  So we'll just frequent the farmers market this year and hope for some good prices on that produce.

The garden planted, with the rabbit fencing at hand to put up before the critters start to munch!

I also got the strawberries and rhubarb in the raised beds weeded.  I had forgotten I'd planted strawberries in the raised bed and the plants couldn't be seen for all the weeds.   I'd started hoeing when I saw a strawberry plant leaf and so weeded rather than prepped it.

The strawberries and rhubarb are looking pretty wimpy this spring.

The greenhouse planting started with a quick run to Wagon Wheel, our local garden center that is worth a blog post all to itself.  I picked up a couple more pepper plants, a couple more zucchini plants and some fertilizer since I don't have time to make fish gurry or manure tea.

Wagon Wheel is a popular Garden Supply store in Homer, close to the base of the spit.

Tomatoes, peppers, zucchini are in.....

Four tomato plants, four pepper plants, five zucchini plants, four cucumber plants and bean seeds round out my greenhouse planting, in addition to the lettuce that has already been in for a month and that is just up and sprouting.  With these raised beds it is easy work.  The soil is horrible (very porous so it dries out quickly) so I added some soil from the garden (the goopy stuff) and fertilizer.  Viola!  Planting done!