Return of the Garden on Boulevard

I can't believe it's been almost 6 years since I last updated my blog! Like many people this spring, I decided to plant a big vegetable garden. I plant veggies every year, but I planted hardly any last year. Current events, however, gave me the motivation I needed to plant lots of veggies and try new things. I may regret all of it when the heat of summer hits, we'll see...

With the new gardening enthusiasm, I wanted to return to my blog for the same reasons I started it:

• to keep a journal of what I did and what worked (and what didn't) that I can refer to later
• to assist other gardeners looking for examples or advice.

So, back to the garden. I've always wanted to grow potatoes, and I decided this was the year to finally try it. The local hardware store had seed potatoes, and one of my favorite kinds at that: 'Yukon Gold.' Asparagus was also on my gardening bucket list, so while I was there I bought a bag of asparagus crowns purely on impulse. You only live once.

My research told me I needed a little over 3 lbs of seed potatoes to feed my husband and I, so a 5 lb bag seemed perfect. I cut up a couple into large pieces, making sure each piece had at least one healthy looking eye--these eyes already had nice little green buds coming out of them. I told a friend of my plans, and she gave me her potato grow bag from Gardeners Supply that she wasn't using. I read the directions online, and the first 5 pieces went into the grow bag with whatever leftover potting soil I had around and a handful of fertilizer (potatoes like a lot of fertilizer). I planted the potatoes shallow, but as they sprout I'll cover them up with a little more soil bit by bit until the bag is full.

The rest of the potatoes were going in the ground with the asparagus--a much bigger ordeal.

I mostly use the Square Foot Gardening method developed by Mel Bartholomew. I've been fond of it since I got my grandfather's copy of the original book from the 1980s. But over the years I've learned to adapt it to my own preferences and to our Georgia climate. I had a 4' x 4' bed that I put in a few years back with "Mel's mix," but it was covered in weeds and one giant ant hill from a winter of neglect. After clearing out the uninvited guests, I enriched it with a couple of bucket fulls of compost from my compost pile and a bag of composted cow manure. It took a couple of hours to prepare the bed, but good soil preparation is always worth it.

After that, I started with the easy part first--planting the asparagus crowns. I bought 2-year crowns, and it takes 3 years for asparagus to mature before you can harvest it. That means I can harvest my first asparagus...some time NEXT spring. Gardening isn't always about instant gratification.

Cute little baby asparagus!

Spreading the roots out before I cover them up

After planting. There are asparagus plants in there, I promise.

Then for the potatoes. I cut them into pieces like before, and let them rest a day before planting to heel over (a recommendation I read online).

Potatoes like to be planted deep with lots of loose soil for them to form nice fat potatoes in. My raised bed was more shallow with heavy clay soil underneath. You can also compensate with some mounding later, but I didn't want to have to do too much of that, either. So I found the middle ground. I dug a nice deep trench 12" wide and maybe 9" deep. As I moved the soil aside, some of the clay at the bottom of the trench got mixed in with the enriched soil from the top of the bed. Then I pushed some of the loosened dirt back into the trench to make a resting place for my potatoes, and spaced the pieces out as needed.

After that, I took some more of the loosened soil and just covered the potatoes, followed by some organic fertilizer. The rain did me a favor and watered it in for me that evening.

There are potatoes in there, I promise.

 Since the trench wasn't filled in all the way, I'll do the same thing I did with the grow bag, fill in the trench more after the potatoes sprout, and maybe end up mounding some soil if needed.

I finished planting those a couple of days ago. We've had frequent rain and mild temperatures since then, so the asparagus and potatoes should be off to a good start. I'll post some progress photos later.