Cleaning up the Garden and Planting the First Seeds

Our Plot Now

If you remember last week's post, this plot looked nothing like this. Old plant stalks were littered all over the garden and there was black plastic everywhere. Our plot now looks much better now. On Saturday morning, we had our first work day of the season to clean up our garden plot and plant some early season crops. A few of the LA grad students, Mike and Sara, met me at the plot to do some of the work. It took about 3 hours to pull some left over stalks, pick up the trash and plastic left by the last tenant and prepare the bed to plant some radishes, spinach, and onions.

Radishes and Spinach

Because of the unseasonably warm weather, we decided to try out a few early season crops very early. We piled on a nice layer of compost and incorporated into the soil where we were going to plant the seeds. We then followed the instructions on the packet and then marked our plantings with some Popsicle sticks. The hardest part was working the ground, but it was actually enjoyable considering the lethargic attitude that winter has placed on me! The weather seems to have me itching to work outside and ride bikes all over town.

Anyway, back to the gardening... We planted a row of radishes and a plot of spinach to see how it does. We still have about half of those seeds left to do stagger plantings so all of our plants don't ripen at once. I don't think everyone would be able to eat all of the radishes or spinach if it all ripened at once! We also planted the onions which could take upwards of 150 days to reach maturity, so obviously we needed to get them in as soon as we could work the ground.

The Onions and Raspberries

We decided to leave a few straggling plants left over from the people who farmed our plot previously. We have a few unidentified plants coming along, but we think the stalks are raspberries that we are going to have to trim back. We also found some volunteer strawberries and what looks to be like some type of bulb flower. We aren't really sure what all could come up, and we aren't going to say no to any nice plants that come our way. Over the next few weeks we will keep on tidying up in the garden and planting other early season crops. With any luck our plants will be up in a few days and the weather will stay nice and warmer. It's very exciting to see all of this stuff starting and being able to track all of the progress!