A Saturday in the Garden

Today was predominately spent in the garden. I have had a few tasks that have turned into many task so I decided to complete them all today. It felt great to great everything done and then be able to rap things up with veggies from the garden for dinner.

The first things completed was harvesting & removing the shelling peas, sugar snap peas & broad beans. Unfortunately I had left the third picking of shell peas on to long and they had gone starchy, they will be composted. I had a few sugar snaps left and ended up with a pound of broad beans. I also left a couple broad bean plants standing to be used for seed saving purposes.

Here are the broad beans I harvested. The seed for these came from
a trade with Down on the Allotment and this photo will be entered into
her "Matron's Worldwide Veggie Show 2009" on July 14th

Once that was done I planted the leeks I started in May in front of the melons. These will be a fall crop and I am hoping there is enough time for them to size up. They take 90 days to harvest so they should have just enough time to grow before the weather turns in October. Here are some photos of how I planted them:

Here are the starts that are a little over a month old now. These are 'Large Musselburg' Leeks.


I remember seeing leeks planted in trenches well watching Victory Gardener, many many years ago. Funny how you can remember obscure things when you're so young. Anyway, so I dug trenches about 5 inches deep and then planted the leeks about an inch below the trench. The soil is being stored in a bin behind the shed and will be added back as they grow. This method should grow some nice, long, white leeks.

Here they are all planted. Now they just need to get growing!

Today I also decided to harvest all the garlic. They probably could have stayed in a little longer but I needed the space. I have not weighed them yet but ended up with 8 nice size heads and 4 small heads.

I have the garlic drying on the patio table with the umbrella up. I am going to try and rope
my Mom into braiding the eight large heads together. We shall see if I am successful.

On the planting front I planted another row of parsnips in place of the garlic also well as a row of carrots & beets. The carrots and beets will be another fall crop and the parsnips I am going to leave in over the winter. I have read they produce a very sweet taste once they freeze in the ground. They will make for a nice harvest during a winter thaw or in March when the snow goes away. The last things I planted was white cucumber in the pot the sugar snap peas were growing in and I planted the red celery I started in May.

The last task of the day was thinning the carrots & beets that are currently growing. A few of the thinnings were big enough for dinner but most went into the compost. Beets and carrots seem to be growing very slow for me this year.