The garden looks very strong, the best it's ever been by far. Nearly every potato planted came up. I just lost a few at the wet North end. The garlic has not produced scapes yet, but the stalks are as thick as I've ever seen them. Bok choi has been disappointing--it's germinating weakly, and when it comes up the leaves are full of hole from cabbage beetles (or some other insect).
The tomato transplants took very well, while the peppers struggled more. However, the peppers were not good transplants in the first place. There are maybe 20 celeriac plants growing, out of 144 planted in trays! But nearly all the ones that made it to the field survived. I think most of the one that died in the field were cultivated out by yours truly. They look a lot like a weed, especially when they are small and weak!
The Amish snap peas that I drilled in to replace a row of failed bok choi is coming up well, although I was surprised at how slooooow they came up. The basil is establishing nicely and I'm pleased that the row is staying free of weeds. The flint corn has about 90% germination and I'm hopeful to have plenty of seed to save and some to mess around with. I'm doing some hand planting in the main corn field to fill in where germination failed. I continue to have trouble planting corn with the Earthway, and that strip is low anyway and it stays cold and wet. Not the best corn ground.
At the East end I have set up a trellis for 2/3 of the pea row. The re-planted row of carrots is germinating nicely and it's staying clean of weeds. The re-planted spinach looks terrific and should be producing in 10 days. There are more beet greens (with miniature beets at his point) than I know what to do with, and I'm ready to start harvesting swiss chard and kale at this point. The double row of lettuce is weedy but it's ready to make salad for me. For some reason I started a 231 cell flat of lettuce last month and I am sticking these plugs into empty spots here and there. Oh, and the kitchen garden has a huge supply of french breakfast radishes. The radishes in the main garden are weedy and disappointing.
The cornfield on the low West end is not as bad as it looks. It's taken some doing to get the grass out, but now it's a fairly clean field. I'm still figuring out what role this strip will play in the future. I can see that the far end is just a bit too low to be very useful for a lot of things. It stays cold and wet too long. I am even considering raised beds in this area.
I filled in spots with this corn planter that belonged to Great Grandpa Art. It works great, and I also tried it for planting lettuce plugs.
The middle strip. The weak stretch of beans are some dragon tongue beans that I saved 3-4 years ago. I'd like to get them going again here so I will just raise these few plants for seed. You can see that the lentils look strong and the flint corn in the next row had a very high germination rate. Amazing, since it was just one weak ear that survived the raccoon onslaught last year!
This is the East strip of rye. The single row of squash is taking well and most of the remaining clods of rye have been dealt with, at least enough for the squash to grow and produce. Not sure what I'll do with the remaining 8' or so--I may just work it up along with the new strip and put more cover crop in. This is going to be A-prime ground next year if I prepare it properly. It's clear now that this high and dry ground is very valuable and productive once the old tree roots are rotted away and worked out.
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