Wedgwood R&D: Starting the garden

It's the end of April, which is the transitional planting season here so we had better get on the stick. We're probably already too late to do peas from seed. I don't mind living off nursery starts the first year, though - we are just getting to know the place.

Sue weeded the raised beds when she was here a couple weeks ago, and I weeded the back bed. Sue thought we probably needed fertilizer. Today I went to City People's Garden Center and talked to a great lady who could easily have been Mom, in her mellow attitude about gardening. I told her our situation and she said "Why don't you just wait a year and see what you've got?" But she agreed we should do an all-purpose fertilizer, and since we want vegetables, to go ahead with some cold-hardy starts. I picked collards, chard, and cabbage. The tender stuff doesn't go in the ground until May, around here.

All the soil seems really awesome, black and full of organic matter and worms. In the back of the back bed, the black stuff only went down a couple inches before I was mixing in reddish clay stuff; that must be the original dirt. I still thought it was good enough for the peas back there. That pea trellis was left here by the Slattons. (Not the white one - that's unused at the moment - the natural-branches teepee-shaped one in front of that.) There are three peas on each leg. I hope that's okay. The variety is Sugar Sprint Snap Pea. In the big dug-up zone to the right and in front of the peas are four collards (Champion), four cabbage (Early Jersey Wakefield - heirloom), and four swiss chard (Bright Lights). I want a lot of greens, and at the garden store it seemed like just a couple plants... but gee, they kind of took up a lot of room. They have to be pretty far apart.

The back bed has a ton of whatever in it which we will learn more about this year. There's a very successful perennial that might be lamb's ear, which would clearly eat the whole garden if given the chance. I left some in to see what it's like, and it's three times the size it was a couple weeks ago. There are also some bulbs in there, a pretty white narcissus kind of thing. (These pictures are definitely not the greatest - Dale had the good camera.)

In the first raised bed, last year's spinach and chard and kale and arugula are struggling into spring, so I just worked fertilizer around them. The arugula has totally bolted but I still like it. The spinach is yellowing; maybe the fertilizer will help. Seattle Tilth says that the brassicas are not going to do well in the same bed two years in a row, but we can't bring ourselves to pull stuff up.

The second raised bed has just a few chives and green onions. I fertilized and turned most of it. Now it has four more "Bright Lights" chard in it.

There's a good-looking rhubarb plant which I am eager to harvest some of, but I think I should wait. It's still pretty green.

Along the back deck there are climbers that we think are roses, and bulbs. Down at the bottom left is a mystery plant (in the closeup) that smells pretty minty; maybe catnip? Anyone know?

There's another bed that still has some raspberries in it. There are raspberries back by the peas, too. There's also a hazelnut tree, how cool is that? I wonder if we will get any before the birds and squirrels do. I chatted with the hazelnut lady at the farmer's market and she was not helpful... she suggested that we get a predator, like maybe a kestrel. She may have been nuts (in addition to selling them).

Here's our fruit tree (we're guessing apple), which needs pruning. One third of those vertical sucker things needs to be pruned back to nothing, one third should have one-third of the height cut off, and the other third left alone. I learned this from the Seattle Tilth garden hotline, which is staffed specifically to answer questions from gardeners like me. I should put them on speed dial.