Garden Time Again

Today was the official beginning of gardening season for me this year. I got to disk the garden, which was pretty fun. But then it is always pretty fun to get to drive the tractor.

I had thought to go ahead and till tomorrow, but I think I am going to hold off. I don't really want to plant anything for the next couple weeks until I am reasonably sure that the danger of frost is past. I'm not planning to do any colder weather crops this year.

As I have been thinking about things, I am reasonably sure that I will do tomatoes, green beans, corn, cantaloupes, watermelons, peppers, squash, cucumbers, basil, and fordhook lima beans. I am also probably going to do black-eyed peas as well.

I plan to do a lot of tomatoes - at least 4 dozen plants. I want to do a dozen Cherokee Purple plants for juice, a dozen Better Boys and a dozen Celebrity for just plain eating, and a dozen Romas for canning and salsa. I'll probably also throw in some grape/cherry tomato plants too. I had good results from the Goliath hybrids last year too. They produced longer than the others did. I may do a few of them too. I'd like to do at least 2 Ox Hearts too. That's a lot of tomatoes.

I am going to try something different with my lima beans this year. I am planning to wait until most of the beans on the bushes are just beginning to turn a little yellow and then pull up the plants. In the past two years I have only gotten 1-2 good pickings off of the plants and the first was always bigger than the second. I think that I will have better results by planting pulling and re-planting than by doing what I have done before. Time will tell. Gardening is a great place to experiment!

Well, that is all for now. I'll keep you updated!