Monday, April 25, 2011

Opening Day!


Yesterday was Opening Day!!! Not for my beloved Boston Red Sox, but for my plot at the Fenway Victory Gardens, just behind where the Red Sox play! I retrieved all of the gardening equipment that we stored over the winter and Gail and I headed to the garden, wondering if anything would be alive.We were greeted with a lot of mud, wet fall leaves, and straw that we had used to insulate some of overwintering projects. Beneath the straw and leaves the garlic, walking onions, and chives were all flourishing! Below is one of the walking onions that had climbed through the straw in search o
f sunlight. The chives and garlic were both alive and ready for sun when we delicately pulled the soggy leaves and straw off of them.
We also brought along a bunch of herb seedlings we started on our windowsills as well as kale seedlings I picked up at Allandale Farm on saturday.
Picture above are the kale seedlings after we got them in the ground and pots with chives, garlic chives, marjoram, sage, thyme, rosemary, basil, flat leaf parsley, and a volunteer curly parsley. We are going to try leaving most of the herbs in the pots (except the chives we over wintered) and using the space that was occupied by last years herb garden to grow:
Horseradish! I ordered the above horseradish roots from Johnny's in the winter. They ship when it is an appropriate time to plant them in your given growing zone. The roots arrived in the middle of last week, and were kept in the refrigerator wrapped in damp newspaper until we planted them yesterday afternoon. Hopefully after the first fall frost I will be digging up enough horseradish to grow more as well as for a few batches of the delicious condiment.

In the coming weeks Gail and I will finish cleaning and preparing the plot for the growing season as well as planting, planting, and more planting!

Spring is back and so is the garden!

2 comments:

Daphne Gould said...

I'm always surprised on how late open days are for community gardens. I usually start planting in March (this year was colder than normal so late). Yours opens a month after I normally have my peas, spinach, carrots and lettuce in the garden.

Ali said...

Be careful where you plant the horseradish -- you won't need to worry about it overwintering, you need to worry about world domination! It loves the New England climate, so you will have plenty to share. Just stick it in a corner where you won't need to re-locate it.

Happy Spring!!