It has been a hot minute since I have written about our veggies. I figured it is about time to show you some real progress that has been made!

Seedlings

We took our seedlings and transplanted the healthy sprouts into our yard garden. We have a total of 11 rows of vegetables. due to some sprouts not being healthy enough we had to also plant seeds in ground. We waited a week after Mothers Day which was a good thing because we had a cold snap two nights in a row.

Transplanting Fail

The lavender and marigolds were transplanted from the green house into the yard after being in the house for 4 days (prior to the cold snap). they weren’t looking so hot, so I tried to give them the best chance with all the sun outside. Sadly, it killed 3 or 4 of my lavender I planted too early. many of my marigolds didn’t survive either, despite being covered overnight. So what have I learned?

So, how are the vegetables?

So far things seem to be doing well! it is nice to have my Livingroom back. We even re-arranged the house a little to make it feel ‘homey’ again. After transplanting into the garden we haven’t ran into too many issues. We did have a period of heavy rain causing concern for a few days. The straw on the ground was super wet, which can cause root rot. On the next possible warm day, I fluffed the hay to air/dry it out and weeded the garden. We have not used any weed or (organic) bug spray on the plants (yet).

Typically I weed the garden every 4 days. Right now, weeding is more work because of the sprouts and seedlings still blending in with the weeds. For the plants that have grown larger and more distinctive, I am ready to lay hay between the plants to ease the burden.

While things appeared to off to a slow start, almost everything planted is doing well! So far what isn’t doing well (in numbers) are the spinach, carrots, romaine lettuce and the things that appear to be slow are the tomatoes and beans/Pease.

What is doing really well!

3 things every new gardener should know:

Research, Research, Research!

Although having to unlimited amounts of information through the internet make sure you know the best soil moister, pH levels, spacing, etc for YOUR area. I am in rural Wisconsin, so it felt a little difficult to find the right information for my area. It felt so generalized.

Adequate Lighting / Light Source.

During the early stages of sowing the seeds, we placed them in our south facing window and rotated the trays every 2ish days. However, since the hours of light was limited and not directly above many of the stocks of the sprouts didn’t appear to be strong nor straight.

“Don’t Touch”!

This is what I struggled with the most. I couldn’t help but do all of the following: over water, under water, moved too much, transplanted to larger pots too soon and then back and fourth in/outside on ‘nice’ days. Let’s just say that I killed my fair share of plants this season…

More To Come!

One of the reasons blogging has been so slow is because my time is being balanced between, kids, homeschooling, gardening, daily work and general house work. Now that weeding should space out a little more I hope to have better pictures and more frequent updates!

Thanks for reading!