Spring Garden Update

The new bean seeds arrived.  I was hoping I'd have enough from what I saved last year, but I decided those needed supplementing.  The saved seeds are "Provider" while these new seeds are "Bountiful".  Maybe next year I can call the cross-pollinated seeds Bountiful Provider.  I like the sound of that, and unless Bountiful is not, the cross pollinated seed ought to live up to it's name. Especially considering we still have some 2010 jars of canned beans.  That was the year I was pregnant and wishing that picking beans would send me into labor.   Now I just have to scrape all the saved seeds out of the pods.  I was lazy last year and just stuck them all in a bucket in the garage.

The seed potatoes arrived a little while back, and I finally got around to slicing them up.  Potatoes are my experiment for this year.  I don't expect to get a years supply off of this crop, but we'll see how they do.  I'm trying Sangre and Desiree.  We're building something along these lines...  It's a potato tower, that will sit in our raised bed, so hopefully keeping them watered won't be a problem.  That was my issue several years ago when I tried growing potatoes in buckets.  My elaborate watering system (using a stick to divert water dripping from the faucet every time the soaker hoses watered the garden) stopped working while we were gone for the week, and my plants died.  Some plants will have to go in the big garden since the potato tower isn't going to hold more than 12-16 seeds.  

My experiment from last year is actually more of this years' experiment, the garlic (Music) looks great, and I'm hopeful that this will actually be enough to last a year and have some to plant in the fall.  My goal is to work up to a years supply plus seed.  We'll see.  

Peas.  One of these years I'm going to plant enough that I can freeze some.  This patch won't produce enough for any to even make it in the door.  The kids will eat them as fast as they are ready.  

Asparagus.  I planted the roots three years ago, so this is the first year I've been able to harvest anything.  We went on vacation for a weekend and came home to some majorly overgrown asparagus, so I picked everything that was tender enough to eat, and we had it for dinner, and everything else is waiting to be turned into soup.  Currently there are only two stalks coming up, so the next picking might be more of a snack than part of dinner...