Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Gardening preparation

This weekend the weather was beautiful.  Christie and I spent several hours outside, cleaning up our yard and preparing our side flowerbed to be a vegetable garden.  The flowerbed runs the length of the side of our house - about 2' by 20'.  It has been filled with daylilies for years, and since the flowerbed is not full sun, the daylilies have not been blooming, only multiplying.  We dug up about a third of the daylilies last year and tackled about half this time around.  So now there is just a small remnant of daylilies on the other side of the Nandina bush.

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The side flower (soon-to-be-vegetable) bed after having the daylilies removed
We have been transplanting the daylilies to a very sunny location at my wife's parents' business - the Thunderbird wedding chapel.

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The Daylilies ready to be transplanted
Our vegetable gardening plans for this year consist of potatoes in this side bed with a self-pollinating kiwi vine growing up trellis mounted on the wall.  We are also going to plant tomatoes in pots so they can be moved to the sunniest locations.  And I think I will try growing broccoli in pots this year, too.  I might try making the plantings ornamental, with some flowers around the broccoli plants.

We bought our first seed potatoes, but decided not to plant them yet since there are more freezing nights in this week's forecast.  The two potatoes I bought are Red La Soda and Red Norland.  I think I would like to buy a large white potato variety as well, but there weren't any available this weekend.  I had planned on ordering my seed potatoes, but when I saw these in the store, I realized I could save a heck of a lot of money by buying them here.  I spent 93 cents on my two seed potatoes.

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Red Morland and Red La Soda seed potatoes
I've got lots of cooking plans for my potatoes, so I hope they produce well for me.

6 comments:

  1. I wish you luck with your potato crop this year Zach! Hope you share lots of yummy recipes we can make with them. ;) Good job on the Daylily removal & relocation. They do multiply like bunnies.

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  2. there's nothing like a good change, but maybe you're being a little ambitious with potatos...
    i'm sure you'll get some, even without sun, but in such a small plot you'll not be able to get many for sure! and potatos are big plants with huge green leafs...
    even so i hope you'll have success with it, at least for a few tasty meals ;P

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  3. I've never heard of a self-pollinating kiwi. Hope you have great success with your garden. It's fun starting over sometimes.

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  4. Hi Zach~~ I grew my tomatoes in large pots last year and they were great. You and your wife did a super job on the side flower bed. Ah fresh soil...a gardener's dream. Have fun and keep us posted.

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  5. Looks good Zach! Good enough to dig right into now. Have fun planting.

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  6. Hey that looks great! I mean your potatoes. I have never tried growing them, but those look really big!
    P.S. I found you on Blotanicals
    and my name is Zach too!

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