Raised beds for vegetables

It's amazing how good 'soil' (in this case, commercial compost and composted manure) can support excellent growth. The lettuce, tomatoes, and other vegetables in my raised beds in the mountains are flourishing.

Now these are permanent beds with stone, but you don't need them to have raised beds. They can be formed without support, actually, and be wonderfully productive.




But it reminds me, again, of how MUCH vegetables need nutrients (compared to trees, shrubs, and perennials).

These lettuces are much bigger and more succulent than any of those I've grown before, obviously thanks to LOTS of extra nutrients in the compost!

And these French breakfast radishes (seeds were from Renee's Garden Seeds) look great!

Isn't it (almost) time to plant warm-season vegetables?

I'm anxious to get going, but the weather is still unsettled. In the mountains of North Carolina (Zone 6), where my main summer garden will be this year, it's going to be close to freezing tonight.

NOT weather for tomatoes, peppers, or eggplant, nor time to plant beans, squash, or cucumbers.

In our main Piedmont vegetable garden (the satellite garden), I've put in asparagus crowns and artichokes (nice perennial vegetables) to accompany the onions, garlic, and leeks already planted.

But it should be excellent weather to finish the last two raised beds (in the mountains) and fill them with soil, and hopefully plant some hardy herbs in the corners of the beds above the house.

I'm also planning to sow beets, turnips, 'small' carrots, an Asian green mix, summer-mix lettuce, and late spinach, too, as an experiment -- you never know, it might be a long cool spring!

Posting, traveling, photos, and conundrums

Traveling used to be about getting away and disconnecting. It still is, but digital connectivity is a seductive pull. I've enjoyed sharing real-time photos and reflections while traveling with a vehicle and laptop, on other trips, but hanging around hotel computers is hardly why you travel.

Interestingly, we've been connected via email and voice messages (and Skype) with family while traveling in Southern Vietnam, via our iPod Touch, but photo downloading, not to mention uploading, hasn't been possible because of slow Internet connections and lack of working USB ports. I had brought a back-up portable drive, but without either a fast connection and/or USB, it's just serving as a back-up.

Curiously, as well, the text composition on Blogspot doesn't work with the simple keyboard interface on the iPod Touch. I only just discovered that if you select HTML mode, it does work.

But I'm still tapping out this letter by letter, so hardly optimal (but, we're taking some afternoon pool time after a long bike ride this morning in the countryside (rice and vegetable fields), so it's not actually a hardship.

So there are plenty of photos to come! And gardening reflections, too, about a country that values freshness and taste as well as vegetables at every meal.

Happy New Year!
Lisa