Spring here in North Alabama has been an eventful time for us, but we had begun our garden long before April’s Fury. We’d begun our current garden last fall with cabbage and turnip greens. The turnip greens were awesome, but the cabbage never seemed to reach their potential.
When January came along with it’s snow, we tilled up anything that looked dead. With February’s snow, we just tilled the entire garden and tried to make it larger.
In March, we planted onions, more turnip greens, and strawberries. The onions are tasting nice and spicy now which is how we like them. The turnip greens didn’t grow too well. My daughter’s strawberries are still growing, but some of my son’s strawberries died. Today, my son planted strawberries that he’d had growing in pots on the porch for over a year. This time he planted them in a container like garden spot.
My daughter prefers flowers to edible plants so she has planted some of the more decorative plants we have. She and I had tried to seed some marigolds and herbs like basil, but they never grew like they should. So, today, we planted in the garden a bunch of herb seeds; basil, oregano, borage, catnip, and even some peppermint. We’ll see how they turn out and, hopefully, post pictures later on.
The first week of May I had my son and daughter go out and plant some beans; Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans, Dixie Speckled Butterpeas, and Alabama Black Butter Beans. I really should have went with them to supervise because now I don’t know which row has which type of bean, and they don’t remember either.
We’ll be planting in my parents’ garden next week too. They haven’t used their garden spot in years so we’ll just have to see if we are able to grow a good garden there too.
4 comments:
Wow, beautiful! We live on 1/5 of an acre and can appreciate your elbow room. We look forward to when we move to CO so the boys can do more, but we're making do on our little patch as best we can.
I saw that you referred to turnip greens. We have planted turnips before but do yours not produce turnips along with the greens? Wasn't sure if there was a greens only type. We love turnips, though around here the greens part aren't used much because the bugs always get them first.
It is great that your daughter is doing herbs and flowers! Oregano seeds are so hard to grow because they are teeny weeny. Well worth the effort though. Edible flowers like nasturtiums or long-lasting blooms for the vase are great to have around. Daisies,black-eyed susans,marigolds and zinnias last a really long time.
Wow! Your garden is huge! I look forward to seeing how it grows this summer.
Looks like you are off to a good start!
I love growing Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans.
Thanks for posting. I didn't even realize that I had comments until a moment ago.
Olivia, this is our first year growing Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans. My family has always grown Rattlesnake Beans, but I had heard that Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans were really good so we decided to give it a try.
Hansberry Clan and Jeremiah and Stephanie, you have made me more appreciative for what we have here. Thank you for that. I thought our garden was actually really small. I have seen your gardens from your posts and they are beautiful.
Hansberry Clan, Our greens do have turnips, but we really don't eat them that much. We might cut them up to eat with the greens every now and then, but that's about it. Our greens also get bugs from time to time, but we wash them with salt about six or seven times. My mom says the salt will kill any bugs. Also, a lot of the folks around here put some kind of poison on the greens to keep the bugs away. We didn't, because we didn't seem to have much of a problem with bugs this fall. I thank the Lord for that.
Thanks for the advice on flowers too. We spent more time gardening for food when I was growing up while my grandmothers planted both flowers and vegetables. Flowers and herbs are a little new for us.
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