09 October 2009

Fall Vegetable Garden

I finally started planting my fall vegetable garden. I went a long time without having anything in the ground, so I'm trying to catch up. My raised bed is finished for the most part and full of compost. This past week I bought onion sets - yellow and white - and some broccoli plants. I looked for lettuce plants, but the ones I saw were real leggy. I'll try again this weekend, and I'll also look for lettuce seeds and spinach seeds.

The feed store where I bought the onions, sold them either by the pound or half pound. With a lot of things, a pound doesn't sound like very much to me, but when it comes to onion sets, it is. I think I planted close to fifty onions so far and I haven't even put a dent in them. I looked into storing them until spring, but it seems like a lot of work and they're very cheap.

I wanted to plant something in the holes of the concrete blocks as an experiment. Since I don't know what will happen, I decided to plant onions - since I have so many of them - and hope for the best. I'll let you know how it goes.

When I got compost for the raised bed a couple of weeks ago, I went ahead and filled almost the whole bed. After reading about planting in compost, the consensus is that it is best as an ammendment to the soil. So, before I planted the raised bed, I went around the yard, digging holes, putting that soil in the garden, and putting compost in those holes. I've done that with half the bed, where I planted broccoli, and in the block holes, where I planted white onions. If I can clean out most of the dollar weed in my other beds, I'll be doing the same thing with the other half of the bed.

I feel like I don't have nearly enough room in this bed for everything I'd like to plant. I'm probably going to plant lettuce, spinach and garlic in any space I can out in the flower bed. Wish me luck.

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