Sara's Garden MarketSustainable Living, Gardening, Flowers, and Food

You may have heard that we had our first harvest from the garden the other night!

We did indeed! I planted radish, spinach, arugula and other salad greens and cabbage in one of the hoop houses at the beginning of March. Through many opening and closing of the hoop house plastic to maintain 55 degrees they made it through our last two snow falls and flurries with flying colors!

Here are some progress pictures (you can refer back to the original post about just the hoop houses to see what they looked like in March, but I bet you can all envision dirt pretty well!)

Onions and Broccoli - Transplants started Dec 2010 and Feb 2011

Don’t they look great!!! I am so glad that I did this!

If you have any questions please comment below or start a thread in the forum!

-Sara

Hello fellow gardeners!

I haven’t been around in a bit, but I am ready to dig back in and get started!

For this first (gardening) post back I will show you my indoor garden that is thriving this year!

Here’s a picture:

In the top left you can see the carrots. Some of them are just about ready. They are the long thin Danvers variety. I tried a few types in the garden last season and these are the best growers so I decided to see if I could get them to grow over the winter. They’d better hurry up though because I need the space and the light for some seeds starting in February!

On the bottom left you can see my herb garden. I recently restarted it. It was getting over grown and got destroyed by some spider mites before I realized what was going on. I have new Sweet Basil and Cilantro seeds/seedlings in there.

On the top right I am wintering over my red Geraniums. Two of which fell victim to the spider mites before I had a chance to stop it. They are doing great though. I don’t water them very often and they seem to like that for wintering over.

On the bottom right (in back) I have some thriving Broccoli, which also had better hurry up and get some heads going! The plants them selves are doing great, so any time now!

On the bottom in front I have yellow onions. These guys need a lot of sunlight so I will probably not do them again over the winter. They are doing just great, just going very slowly and I have a feeling the layers are going to be quite thin because they need the sunlight to get them pumped up.

The dead thing in the front was a really nice Petunia which was on it’s second life with seeds from the original plant! It got taken over by the Spider Mites like crazy. I have a feeling that either the Basil or the Petunia was the origin of the infestation.

Notes: There are several safe controls for spider mites and other bugs for indoor gardens out there in the garden centers. Look for ones especially for vegetables and edible plants. They are the safest.

Look at the calendar for the seed planting and starting and other important dates!

Thanks for stopping by,

Sara Murray

So, I thought the yellow onions were dead, done, gone.

I was lazy about getting them out of the garden just because I didn’t have anything to go in anyway so why bother. Well, our weather dried out and I went out to check the onions after about 2 weeks and they had new shoots!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Up until yesterday when we started getting tons of rain and wind they were doing just great!

We’ll have to see what happens over the next week or so if they survive all this rain and if they survive the cold that is now on the horizon.

🙂 So, if you get a lot of rain chances are they will loose their tops and stop growing, but they aren’t dead. If you can dry them out some how or if the rain stops and the ground gets dry again they will come back!

thanks for stopping by – Sara

Hi everyone!

I have an updated picture of the indoor garden for you! It is growing like mad, and it’s so neat to have a bit of summer right in my dining room.

The giant monster tomato plants (started Feb 1st) that are actually pretty normal size are on the far left. On the very top of the shelf is the potter that has the cilantro and basil (started Feb 1st) which are still going strong and I have had several small harvests out of!

The next shelf down from L-R are seedlings (started March 27th) of jalapenos, alyssum, petunias (regular ones that are still hard to germinate and extremely small and slow growing so far), bell peppers, broccoli, and large yellow onions.

Next shelf down are seedlings of alyssum, carrots, and 3 different varieties of tomato plants.

(The alyssum was started some time at the end of March.)

Everything that you see besides the large tomato plants and the cilantro and basil at the top will be transplanted some time around May 20, which is our frost-safe date according to the farmer’s almanac!

In a few weeks I will do another short video before I do the transplant so you can see how big they get before I transplant them.

Thanks for stopping by!

~Sara

I planted my onions, radishes and peas today!

A ton of large yellow onions, snow peas and dwarf peas, and cherry globe radishes! I planted a ton of radishes because once they are done I will clean out that part of the garden to plant other things in, so I use more than I normally would.

Here is a nice little guide for when to plant stuff:

Very early spring (as soon as the ground can be worked)
* Onions
* peas (Martha Stewart plants hers every year on St. Patrick’s Day – she lives in New England!)
* spinach

Early spring
* lettuce
* beets
* carrots
* radishes
* dill
* cilantro
* cabbage
* broccoli
* celery
* kale
* potatoes

After last frost date
* beans
* corn
* melons
* cucumbers
* squash
* tomatoes
* peppers
* pumpkins
* eggplant
* basil

Happy Planting!

I finally got my outdoor seeds started!

I live in Minnesota so my first day of safe frost-free planting is May 20th this year according to my handy Farmer’s Almanac. There are seeds that you can start outside before that, but not many. I like to transplant plants to the garden for a lot of veggies.

Carrots, tomatoes, and several others can take 75+ days to harvest. With only 3.5 solid months of growing season I need to maximize my garden time, and that means starting from plants, not seeds, for anything that has a growing time of 60 days or more. (You don’t want your first harvest to come during your frost! What fun would it be to not eat anything out of your garden for months?)

Here is a picture of the seed flats I have started:

I have press-and-seal wrap over the trays to preserve moisture and warmth which will start the seeds faster. I have 2 kinds of trays: small egg-crate style, and large potter style. I use the large pots for things that need to get pretty big before transplant like carrots and tomatoes. I use the small egg crate style for flowers and smaller veggies, and things that can go in the garden sooner size-wise as well as colder-tolerant.

So here’s what I have started:

• Yellow Onions
• Long Carrots
• Jalapenos
• Bell Peppers
• Broccoli
• Beef Steak, Roma, and Salad Tomatoes
• Petunias (regular ones :))

These I will sow right in the garden:

• Beans
• Peas
• Short Carrots
• Cilantro
• Basil
• Radishes
• Zucchini
• Cosmos
• Morning Glories

These are either fast growers, or cold weather tolerant and do well going right in as seed.

Thanks for stopping by!