What's Growing in the Kansas Garden in March and April

MARCH

We originally planned to layer newspaper, and manure over the garden soil in the fall, but it is so hard for me to pull out any plant that's still producing just to work the ground. Unfortunately then cold weather set in and the garden lay bare until now.

We shoveled out several pick-up loads of cow manure from a neighbor. It was quite old and clumpy and I eventually had to garden rake out a lot of the chunks to actually plant seeds. Live and learn, but the soil is improved!

Also in March my sweet C helped me plant lettuce, cabbage, and tomatoes indoors...and some flowers for her. Our makeshift grow-light is perched on the hearth, which is no longer active this time of year, with potting soil filled strawberry boxes to put seeds in.  

APRIL

Here are the lettuce containers almost ready to go in the garden! I set them outside in the shade of our front porch for a couple hours for a couple days to get used to the realities of outdoor life.

Poking up through the soil is mint, buried in a bucket to keep from spreading...

and strawberries. 

I received a few plants free with our tree row order last year and also dug some from a friend's patch that was getting crowded.

I saved seeds from heirloom tomatoes last year that were given to us by a friend. There were 10 or so different varieties, but I mixed them together in a my paper packet. This year's tomatoes will be a mystery! They sprouted well (ahem, 65 plants) under the flourescent light!

Near the end of April, we planted the baby tomato plants in the garden and put milk jugs over them like a mini greenhouse instead of hardening them off. A new experiment.

I didn't have quite enough jugs so used a gallon tin can to protect a couple plants.

The peas are beginning to sprout and grow. It seems like it took them an extra long time, however they are in a quite a bit of shade throughout the day. Dear S fastened an old gate in the garden for the peas to climb on.

The cool season seeds I planted are coming up too...

Turnips. Kale. Red Beets.

Sweet C and I planted 160 red onions from sets, plus a few Candy that didn't grow well last summer that over-wintered and were just a bit larger than the store-bought sets. We decided not to plant onions since I can buy them for $.33 a pound, but that sale is usually just for yellow onions, so hopefully we can enjoy some garden-fresh red slices on grilled burgers too.

 

 

This is one of the six potato rows planted with sprouted Russets from the store @ $.20 a pound. We weren't going to plant any of these as well, because of the sale price, but they were quite squishy and useless anyway. 5 pounds planted is supposed to yield 50-75 pounds. We shall see at harvest time!

The transplanted lettuce. 

It took a little while to get established. I have never started lettuce inside, but this year I tried it with seeds I saved from last year's bolted crop.

The strawberries are blooming and growing!

How does your garden grow?