Sowing Seeds Directly into the Garden

Sowing seeds outside is still a great way to start a garden.  I only plant certain seeds indoors that I know I can easily transplant into the soil and can bring large harvests of fruits and vegetables.  There are some seeds that I am not able to transplant or are just not worth the effort because they don't need that much time to mature.

Those seeds that I am talking about are corn, carrots, and beans.  Corn can take some time and might be possible to transplant them, but unfortunately they are not great transplants and are best for planting them into the soil directly. 

Carrots cannot be transplanted because their roots will not grow straight making for really strange looking roots.  Pole beans are simply much more easier to grow directly outside in my opinion.

This is exactly what I did today.  This is the last step in the garden that I take once I complete all my transplants.  I still have some more transplants to go including flowers, some tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.  Before time ran out I wanted to make certain that I had planted these seeds into the garden.

Two rows of pole beans.

Two rows of corn and one row of carrots on the left.

Before planting these seeds today this past weekend I also collect some spinach that was ready for eating.  Check out the size of these leaves below.

This wasn't the largest leaf that I collected either.  This was probably much more closer to the average size that was growing outside.  With 56 leaves and a weight of 4 pounds means that they were very large and heavy leaves.

Tilling the Garden Completed Along with Spinach Harvesting

This week has been busy with the tilling of the garden which took a few days and picking many rocks that needed to be removed from the garden.  This is something I started this year in order to remove as many rocks as possible while I was tilling.  Some of them prevented the tiller from doing its job and I had to remove it.  This way next season there should be less rocks to deal with and it won't take as long to till.

Anyway it got done and below is the result of tilling the garden.

Spinach has been growing quite well especially with all the fertilizers and water that I have been giving it.  It has been using it to grown dark green and beautiful leaves that have been quite delicious.  They have not been bitter either which can happen with too much nitrogen.

34 leaves and a half a pound is what was picked up this past weekend.  It doesn't sound like much, but trust me with leaves of this size they will last for a few weeks at least.

Harvesting of Spinach for 2015 Completed Today

Although I picked my spinach leaves today I still have plenty of more harvests to come.  I pick my spinach leaves at intervals rather than all at once.  I find that I can enjoy my spinach leaves for so much longer and I won't be overwhelmed with all the leaves that I collect. 

This is a little bit different than with lettuce because with lettuce you can choose to pick them all at once or at intervals.  It is all your preference and what type of lettuce you grew as well.

I am going to have some of my spinach for dinner tonight and throw them in a salad that I am going to make.  I took some off the plants before picking them in order to make sure that they were ready and were not bitter.  This can happen with leafy plants such as lettuce, celery, and even spinach.  They were not bitter and were not going to get any bigger so I picked them today.

So far the plants are looking good and I hope to continue picking them throughout the season as long as they don't get any insect or animal pests attacking them.