Garden Planning | Southern Bed

I am getting excited for this year's garden. Now that we live on a 1/4 acre lot, we are finally going to have space to grow more. So now the tricky part is trying to plan it all, so we get a good yield without over extending myself now that we have the space for me to easily do so. I have already started my sweet peppers and hot peppers, and have also started my tomato plants. My current set up is that I have two 8'x4' raised beds, as well as all the pots on the patio. I have three fruit trees that I planted in the lawn. Just this past few days I have begun to pepper some more areas for planting.

Southern Bed
The first one being a bed all along the south side of the house. My plan for this one so far is to plant a row of peas up against the house, and build some 4' tall supports for them to climb. And start rows of lettuce, radishes and carrots and perhaps some cilantro and an area of spinach. My thoughts are that this bed will be warmer than the rest of the garden, as it will get the reflected light from the house, and will get sun for most of the day, so I will be able to get a few extra days/week ahead due to the microclimate there. Then once we are definitely past the threat of any freezes, I will hopefully plant the 8 sweet pepper plants that I sowed under my lights in this garden. As I figure that they will love to soak up the heat. One thing I plan on trying this year other than in my raised beds, is a living mulch. So I will also plant some watermelon and melon here and let the vines creep around my pepper plants.

I also plan on constructing a trellis to place on the south side of my air conditioning unit (which is located at the easet end of the southern bed) and have either cucumbers or pole beans grow on it. The reason I am planning on doing this, is to help keep our cooling costs down. If you have an air conditioner, shading the unit can increase its efficiency by as much as 10%.

Natural Sugar Snap Pea Supports

First, I apologize for the lack of posts. We have been very busy lately with the birth of our third child, but I intend to get into the habit of posting more. This past weekend we started our working on our spring garden. Antonio and Julia Belén helped me put together the supports for the sugar snap peas we had soaking from overnight. We used the trimmings from our hydrangea bush that I had purposely kept for this very reason. I like the natural look the exhibit, as well, can't beat the fact that they are free. After we put the branches into the raised bed, and I tied off the tops, the kids sowed the peas for me, the plants may end up coming up in clumps, as Julia Belén didn't quite understand the concept of the spacing, but she at least kept the peas in their correct squares in the raised bed.

Tomato & Sugar Snap Pea Sowing

I went over my tomato seed stash, and ended up picking out 12 varieties that I am thinking of growing, although two of them are small tomatoes (Black Prince and Tumbling Tom) that I plan on growing hanging baskets. I am excited to try them, as all but one of the varieties are new to me this year. I just don't know where I am going to grow them yet.

Over the past few days I have finally gotten around to sowing the seeds, and setting them up in my light-shelves.

Like most things I tend to do (ask Julia), I don't account for how long they will actually take. On my task to-do list was to sow our sugar snap peas outside. I finally got to it after helping getting the kids ready for bed, while Julia was reading them a bedtime story, I was outside with my headlamp quickly preparing soil and sowing 40 sugar snap seeds. Hopefully these do better than my fall planting did. The unseasonably long span of below freezing days we had in January did them under. They had just all started blooming, with their white flowers opening up, promising fresh sugar snap peas, to only wither away.

Sugar Snap Peas

Last night I soaked some peas, and today I was able to get outside and enjoy this great fall weather and sowed 50 pea seeds. Hopefully I did not wait too long to do so.

Cooking our Sugar Snap Peas

This past week Julia cooked a dish comprising solely of the sugar snap peas that we grew in our garden. They were delicious and very easy to make. 

Here's what she did:

- Saute some chopped onions in a little bit of butter and olive oil until soft.

- Add a few tablespoons of water and the prepped sugar snap peas. Cover and cook on low for about 5 minutes.

- Take off the lid, turn up the heat and cook on high for a few minutes until the water cooks out. And you're done!

A variation could be to cook some bacon in the pan first, take out the bacon, and then use the leftover grease to cook the onion instead of the butter and oil.

Snap Pea Flowers

We noticed that our Snap Peas flowers are starting to bloom, so that hopefully means that we'll be having some snap peas soon.

Snap Pea, Lolla Rosa Lettuce, and Sparkling White Tip Radish

I did one last sowing of Snap Peas directly into the garden, and sowed Lolla Rosa Lettuce and some more Sparkling White Tip Radishes along with it. Hopefully it is not already too warm for the peas. Hopefully they still have enough time to produce some tasty peas. I also went ahead and sowed indoors 4 cilantro, to try to get them started.

Snap Pea, Lettuce, Spinach, Chives (garlic & regular), Radishes & Carrots

Today I sowed some more snap pea, spinach, radishes and carrots. I also sowed some lettuce, chives (regular and garlic) and garlic. It was a gorgeous day at about 74, can't believe that it was snowing six days ago.

Early Planting (Spinach, Peas, Carrots, Radishes)

Antonio and I got out into the garden to do some early season planting. We planted in a 9 gallon container some spinach, snap peas, carrots and radishes. Antonio really enjoyed helping out, he really got into it with me. After sowing the seeds, he went all by himself to check on the balloon flowers that we had transplanted last week, and wanted to add some compost onto them to make sure they grow well.