Planted peas and onions

Weather: Below freezing last night. 50s during the day. Cloudy, clearing to sun by noon. Windy. Forecast says more of the same for the next week, except for Saturday which will be in the 40s with snow showers in the morning.

I meant to plant peas a few days ago on St. Patrick's Day. All the really cool gardeners have had their peas started in rain gutters or under cloches for weeks. But at least we got the darned seeds in the ground on the First Day of Spring! That's better than last year, when I planted no peas at all.

DD15 planted the peas along the back of the strip along the fence, where there were eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers last year. This strip could really use a round of legumes. When the peas are done at the end of May, I will put beans in. There are also a few perennial flowers left in the ground there, and some spring bulbs getting ready to bloom. I can fill any bare spots with potted herbs. If things go as planned, I will be able to strip the pea vines off the fence by June, before they shade the neighbor's tomatoes in the next yard.

I didn't have any innoculant for the peas, so I will look for some and add it after the fact, hoping it will still work. Pruned the lemon thyme at the end of strip. Smelled great and is budding new stems all over.

We got onions in the ground, too - sets of white onions, and green onions from seed. Intense little 3x3 patch of each, where there were sweet potatoes last year. I buried a lot of kitchen waste under there last fall, and I will mulch with newspaper and grass clippings after the rows sprout. Not sure we had the "onion snow" just yet, but the ground is completely workable, so I am forging ahead.

I filled the fish boxes with bagged soil and stacked the boxes. Need more boxes and more bagged soil. I want to try a few with regular garden soil, too. The kids filled the top one with water to let it filter down and soak the soil. I want to get them really wet and let them drain before I plant them with lettuce and spinach. My plan is to raise the boxed off the ground to try to keep the slugs and rabbits out. We lost our whole fall lettuce and spinach crops to critters.

My plan is to ramp up my casual veggie gardening this year, and so far, I am way ahead of last year's game. Let's see how much this little city backyard can produce.

TO DO: Buy legume innoculant. Find another camera on eBay for garden photography.