Working on the Kitchen Garden

We ended up with about a 2-3 hour window of dry weather between more serious rainfall today. While I certainly didn't get anywhere close to as much done as I had hoped, I still was able to make a little gardening progress on this wet, wet weekend. I focused today on the area I call my "overflow" kitchen garden. I began by giving it another quick, complete weeding. Then Dad helped me and we added 6 buckets of fresh Natures Best to extend and build up the bed.

Then I placed my two large size grow bags and planted the "Red Chieftan" potatoes that I had ordered from High Mowing Seed out of Vermont. The minimum order was 2.5 lbs and that was really more than I needed. But of coarse I had to plant all of the seed potatoes that they sent. So 6 went into the largest bag and 5 into the slightly smaller one. 

As you can see they were definitely ready to be planted! I also stuck a small volunteer potato plant of "Red Norland" into another pot placed between these two bags. It had sprouted up in the middle of this bed and I couldn't stand to toss it into the compost pile.

Next to the three potato bags I planted a row of 9 "Redwing" onions. I purchased these storage onion plants at the Farmer's Market a few weeks ago and I am glad to get them in the ground.

After I got the whole row planted and water in, I covered the row with two hoops and remay fabric. This will provide some protection from both the deer and the birds.

When I was weeding the bed I was pleasantly surprised to discover 3 small plants of Cosmos "Bright Lights". I had some plants of this variety growing here last year and apparently they self seeded. So I moved the 3 starts to the front of the bed where they can happily grow in front of the Zinnias I am also growing for this area.

And speaking of those Zinnias, guess what starting germinating today? When I looked inside the greenhouse this afternoon I discovered that the first 8 "Country Fair Blend" Zinnias had come up!

When I checked the other flat I found the first 5 Cosmos "Xanthos" and the first 11 Cosmos "Rubenza" had also germinated. Since I had only planted this seed Wednesday night, and the last two days have been cool and rainy, I wasn't expecting the seed to germinate quite so soon. So even though I planted my seeds a little later than I had hoped,  I am off to a strong start with germination rates this year.