Rounding the corner of the beautiful full moon of May, we’re now entering the latter weeks of spring. The grass is jumping and the ragwort is high! This photo of our Pilot Mountain hillside makes the case.

Many plants are hitting their stride this week. That, of course, includes the weeds. This year the straw that we’ve used for mulching hasn’t been all that clean and now there are hundreds of little wheat grass seedlings popping up in the mulch. Kinda ironic, eh? We had similar issues with straw bales but not nearly as much weeding was required.

Upper Garden May Progress

The Week’s Snippet

• The raised beds were completed and will get planted next time we’re up there.
• Connected and ran 3 hoses from garden spigot up the hill to blueberry patch
• The drip irrigation lines were laid in once the beds were complete.
• Touched up bare patches in the lawn areas with grass seed and straw.

 

What We’ll Plant Next Week

Upper Garden planting plan is a simple one this year:

• Tomatoes
• Peppers
• Beans
• Cucurbits
  • squash
  • cucumbers

Low Rain, so High Watering

Given an entire week of no rain, and high temps, the name of the game is now watering. It’s been a challenge hauling water up to the top of the hill for the fruit crops, so we’ve rigged a workaround.

We installed a new “line” of three garden hoses from the garden hose outlet all the way up the hill to the blueberry patch. The hose sections were in pretty rough shape so it’s no big deal leaving them stretched out in the woods between the cabin yard and the blueberry patch for now.

Next Week’s Plans

The next phase is having a large tank (complete with hose spigot) mounted on a platform near the top of the hill. We can then fill it and use the gravity pressure to water all the plants. Hope to get that done next week.

The drip irrigation lines were laid in once the beds were complete. Next, a timer system will be installed.

Lower Garden Happenings

Same deal with water here. A new line was run for most of the containers including the (experimental) sweet potatoes-in-a-bag project (see our You Tube clip below about this experiment here).’

Yard and Garden Work

• Refurbished a short bed under the little archway and a long bed under another archway.
• Set up TP supports for our Purple TeePee beans using our home grown bamboo poles
• Potted up seedlings tomatoes and peppers into larger pots
• Renovated our subdivision entry sign-weeding, pruning, and wood chip mulching.
• Prepped our last section for a raised bed

Planted

• Sweet potatoes planted in bags
• Nasturtiums-Empress of India (See photo)
• Potted up seedlings tomatoes and peppers into larger pots
• Dill Weed

Coleman is trying a new sweet potato growing method this year. 

Garden Harvests

• Strawberries
• Leafy greens
• Chard
• Kale
• Arugula
• Calabrese Broccoli sprouts
• Radish leaves
• Mahonia berries
• Dandelion greens

Favorite Garden Snippet of the Week

Plant Support Trellis Clip – For string and trellis supports of vining crops

• Tomatoes on a string – fast & easy installation
• Peppers, eggplants, cukes and beans
• Viney vegetables and flowers
• About anything you wish to train upright.

Landscape Features we Especially Enjoyed this Week

Mahonia Berries –  “bealei” (Oregon Grape Holly), are edible if the birds don’t get them first!

Virginia sweetspire (Itea virginica) – a low maintenance, fragrant shrub for the shade garden.

That’s the way it was this week in our little patches of green inspiration. Hope you all are gardening strong and enjoying your pursuits of gardening excellence.

Please, do let us know what’s going on in your garden spot. We got to see a fantastic array of gardens this past week just by asking folks to send in garden “selfies” . {Pretty cool! So let us hear from you via the GardensAll Facebook page, or send us an email.

Coleman for GardensAll.com

Let’s keep on growing!