Garden progress 2011

Garden progress 2011

Anchorage is in zone 2 and has a very short but productive growing season.  We start planting the garden every year on Memorial Day. Even though our season is short with the long days and the midnight sun things grow fast. Since there are so many zones in Anchorage you can usually tell it is time to plant when the leaves are in full bloom. We usually start the seeds that need to be started and transplanted in mid-April around 4/20. If you want to plant greenhouse or warmer crops you need to start earlier. We did not plant tomatoes in time so we picked some tomato four packs up at a greenhouse class and transplanted them on planting day.  We started zucchini, squash, beans, sweat peas, broccoli and cauliflower beforehand. We started fava beans later.

4/20 Starting seeds

Tomato plants ready for transplanting

Teddy looking over the brocoli, cauliflower, and zuchini

Sugar snap peas

Transplanted tomatoes. They are not falling over they grow better  towards the end and on their side

4/26 Plants have germinated

Cauliflower and brocoli

Sugar snap peas

Tomatoes

Beans

5/5 more growth and more transplanting

Peas and beans

Beans on top tomatoes and broccoli on the bottom 

Peas and beans transplanted

Transplanted beans inside

Broccoli

5/12 More growth

Peas, beans and tomatoes

Tomatoes on top left beans on top and bottom

5/22 Adding perlite to make the soil more fluffy

This weekend we got more work done in the garden. Our zucchini, peas and beans have been hardened off and were ready to be planted. The broccoli and cauliflower we planted didn’t grow well so more has been started.  Mike built us more garden beds from pallets so we have 9 pallet boxes now.  We have three for beans and six for tomatoes. He made cold frames or hothouses out of them with pvc pipes. We covered the  pole beans with plastic but we are still hardening off the tomatoes. If you start seeds indoors you can’t put them directly out in the garden from inside because the sunlight is blocked from the windows. If you put them out in the sun right away they won’t make it so you need about a week to get them ready by putting them out more and more. Sometimes we leave them in the shade to get them ready.  

We got some free dirt/compost mix from craigslist that we put in the big garden bed and some of the pallet boxes.  We planted garlic, onions and shallots in the front yard. We buy those already started. In the big garden bed we transplanted the zucchini and peas and planted some seeds too in case the transplants don’t do well. We also sowed carrots, spinach, radishes and a lettuce mix directly in the garden.  The beans went in the cold frame. We are trying fava beans this year but they got a later start and will be in a pallet box cold frame by themselves.

Adding fertilizer

The big garden bed to the left the start of the cold frames to the right

Mike working on a coldframe

Garlic in front yrd to the right of the sticks shallots to the left

Shallots in front yard

Onions in front yard

Beans are in plastic and ready to go

All the cold frames

The big garden bed the peas are in the back and front towards the fence. Zuchini is to the right. The area in the center was planted with carrot seeds. The edges of the middle section is spinach seeds to the left and a lettuce mix to the right. Radish seeds were planted along the edge of the zuchini section and to the edge of the section the the left. Brocoli and cauliflower will be planted to the left when it germinates