May 31, 2010

Let's Get It Started!


If this isn't just a party in a box I don't know what is. These little gems are going to be flowering potatoes and they just made me smile when I opened the box. Hopefully the potatoes will be as good to eat as the packaging looks.

This is the week that as a gardener I look forward to all year. The end of May is the official last frost date in Chicagoland and all the vegetables can safely be planted out. This is actually the latest I've planted out but it was a busy month with work so although I feel off track a bit I'm really right on schedule.

I planted the flowering potatoes with three types of beans. In "Great Garden Companions" by Sally Jean Cunningham she claims that planting potatoes and bean together helps to reduces the number of Colorado potato beetles and Mexican bean beetles. We'll see, but I think the flowering potatoes will look pretty with green, purple and yellow beans.

I also got all the tomatoes planted even though they we're looking pretty leggy. I just end up digging a trench and planting the stems horizontally. This helps give the tomatoes a good root system and allegedly an earlier harvest.

My eggplants were the largest that I've ever planted out so I'm hoping for a productive and early harvest from them. I am starting to see some flea beetle holes in the leaves but I'm hoping that they're large enough to not let that damage them too much.

I put in four peppers so far with several more to add. I hope to plant more carrots ,lettuce and beets this week as well.

It's been a hot spring so far and I hope that this bodes well for the coming summer so that I'll have lots of heat loving veggies to share.

1 comment:

garden girl said...

Our tomatoes were a little leggy too. I put them out the third week of May with lots of stem in the ground, and they've really taken off.

I love the packaging for those potatoes. They really do look like a party in a box.