More Spring Planting in the Kitchen Garden

Today I was able to finish the Spring planting in the kitchen garden that I started last weekend. I began by bringing in more Nature's Best Soil. I filled up one small grow bag and built one 16 X 16 raised bed.

In the raised bed I planted 5 "Red Bull" onions. As you can see in the picture above, these young plants already have a small, deep red section where the bulb will form later in the season. And I can promised you, they really smelled like onions already too! Last year my "Red Bull" onions weighted on average over one pound each.So much potential from such a small plant.

In the grow bag, I planted 12 "Camelot" shallot plants. I have never planted shallots before. These young plants were much smaller than the onions, which is to be expected. Once I got all of the plants settled, I gave everything a good watering in.

I also spent some time planning out the rest of the garden space. Some plants, like the tomatoes, are still a month or more away from joining the garden. But I needed to get a good idea where they would be growing and how much space they would take up. So I got out all of my miscellaneous towers, trellis, and grow bags and marked out the garden.

I have a bean tower, two small potato bags, and a trellis ready and waiting. My potato order from Maine should be here any day.

Recently I purchased two large potato grow bags. I haven't ever tried growing potatoes in grow bags, so this is one of my new adventures this year. If nothing else it should certainly make harvesting much easier.

After I got the garden all marked out, I created a raised bed in the front section. This area will be taken over by Winter Squash in the Summer. But right now there is time to get a quick harvest of radish before the Squash need to get in the ground. So I planted four rows of Radish; (2) of "Red Planet" from Renee's Garden, (1) of "Pink Punch" from Renee's Garden, and (1) of "Plum Purple" from Seed Savers Exchange. The radish should be ready to harvest in approx. 28 days and then this will become a Winter Squash raised bed.

As you can see, I had some "help" with the radish planting. Solomon, a mostly indoor-cat, was fascinated with the whole process.

Once I finished planting the radish seed,  I covered both the radish and the newly planted onions with a remay tunnel. This will allow both the onions and the radish plants to get off to a strong start without having to worry about any bird or chipmunk damage. So here is the completed Spring garden, minus the planted potatoes.

Once the two new grow bags were taken out of the box, the box instantly became a cat trap! First to explore was Solomon.

Then it was Parvati's turn. And when she finally vacated the box, her brother Padma moved in. Gardening - and empty boxes- brings happiness to all walks of life.