April 1st Update

Today is April 1st, and the garden is doing very well.  We finished off winter with very mild weather.  It was probably the mildest winter that I remember.   Our last hard freeze was in early January, and we had barely had 1 frost in early  March, where I had to lay out a tarp to protect some plants. 

Squash

In my post from late February I talked about planting some squash plants in pots for a very early start. I had planted spaghetti squash, golden acorn squash, and jumbo pink banana squash.  I had transplanted them to bigger pots, and then around the first week of March, I put them in the ground.

Jumbo Pink Banana Squash

I put in 2 banana squash plants, and later direct seeded 1 more.   I planted 2 of the spaghetti squash plants and gave 3 plants to my sister, which we planted in her yard.  I also put in all the golden acorn squash.

The banana squash are doing very well.  I have mulched the area like crazy with lot of leaves as you can see.  They already have flowers developing, and the vines are running.  

Golden Acorn Squash

The golden acorn squash came from some seeds from a store bought squash.  So I was not sure if they would fruit true to seed.  Surprisingly these are not vining, but are growing more like zucchini!  They are even developing some female flower which look like they will open soon.  Unfortunately there are no male flowers, so they wont be able to develop.  They plants are still fairly small though, so I am surprised they are doing this!

Below is a picture of one of the female flowers. You can see how the plant seems to be a busy variety. 

Female flower that looks close to opening 

spaghetti squash

One of my spaghetti squash plants is doing very well and vining, also with some soon opening flowers.   The other one looks like it will be a runt of a plant.  Shown the big plant, shown growing next to some lettuce that is bolting soon, and some cabbage, and garlic.  

Tomatoes

After transplanting to bigger pots, I put my cherry tomatoes into the ground in mid-March.  Here they are today. I got 4 good plants, and gave the two other ones to my sister.  They are starting to have some blooms.  Next to them you can see some of the spinach that is bolting.  The spinach was awesome this year. I have frozen a bunch of it because we had so much.  I am hoping to let a bunch of it go to seed so I can collect seeds for this fall.  

cherry tomatoes

variety of onions: red,yellow, white, planted from onion sets

 Onions and Garlic

My onions and garlic are also doing very well.  My onions are pretty dense... hopefully not too much so.  I dont see any bulbs forming yet, but the plants look very healthy. As you can see I have the whole garden area very heavily mulched with leaves.  So weeds have not been a problem.  This winter I would go around the neighborhood with my truck and pick up bagged leaves for this purpose.  

And here are my garlic plants. They also look very well.   

garlic

 Cool Weather Crops

 There is a mixture of the cool as well as warm weather stuff growing now.  I still have a few heads of cabbage growing.  Once again, the cabbage was great this late winter.  Probably harvested about 12 heads at least, and have three in the fridge.  The red mustard shown below is also doing very well.  My red mustard I had planted in the front flower beds have gotten powdery mildew and aren't looking as nice.

The peas I had mentioned in the previous post are doing very well.  Here they are shown in the back.  There are some flowers blooming, and a few pods have started.  The plant are about 5ft tall now.
These are shown growing behind another spinach patch.  In front of that is a small turnip patch.