Sunday, April 25, 2010

Garden Update April 2010

I started seeds MONTHS ago so that I'd be ready to go early to plant them.  And here it is the end of April.  Just this weekend, I finally put 7 basil plants in the ground, 3 patty pan squash, and 5 shallots.  The best laid plans...  Anyway, it was good to finally get them in.  And I planted them with some gorgeous compost that we'd sifted a couple weekends ago.  We used the coarser woody chunks as mulch on the yard to suppress weeds.  The fine compost I put in a trash can to store until I needed it in the garden.  In addition to a healthy crop of pill bugs and ear wigs, I couple squash-like plants sprouted in the trash can.  So I planted those in the garden today too and labeled them "mystery".  DS, who loves flowers, was pleased that we were able to plant about 7 marigolds that were already blooming after starting them from seed.

I gotta hand it to our citrus trees.  Today I picked the last orange tree clean.  They've been feeding us steadily since early December.  I've harvested over 216 pounds of mandarins, tangelos and navel oranges!  That's a lot of produce.

I've been keeping my "garden finance log" with the expenses and yields of the garden, starting in Nov 2009 with a large seed order.  To date, my garden expenses (which excludes water - hard to quantify - and labor) are $132.21 and my yield is $449.41.

We picked more of our carrots today, which is such a great crop for kids.  It is so fun to see what comes up out of the ground!

2 comments:

  1. I am jelous about the citrus and carrots. We are in WA and I have just started the baby transplants. I mean, we started from seed a couple months ago but they are just now big enough to put in the garden and still see...
    My first harvest should be radishes in about 2 weeks. Then probably nothing for another month at least.
    nini2033a@yahoo.com

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  2. I put some radishes in for the winter, harvested those, and need to plant more. I wish I had more time!

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