Garden Update

Its been a while since my last update. Nothing too crazy going on in the garden. Lots of weeding. Things are growing slowly but surely. Actually harvested enough greens (mostly thinned Arugula) to make up most of two salads. There have been two minor garden related problems recently.

First is that I messed up the location of the potato plants. I spread the rows out a bit further than I intended. I forgot that I was supposed to plant beans along one side of them. Oops. So now the beans are being spread out to a few different locations. A bit in the pepper area since my wimpy looking pepper sprouts have reduced my expectations for that crop. A good amount of beans alongside the tomato area because that was larger than it needed to be. A few more over by the Swiss Chard. It would probably make more sense if I just link my updated planting map.

The other problem is that I seem to have some flea beetles, primarily on the Pak Choi. I started looking into organic pest control. I was unaware that Pyrethrins are derived from Chrysanthemums and are considered organic. The homestead has never claimed to be organic, and I am not firmly set on it being organic, but I'd like to at least go through a progression of least harmful chemicals up through more nasty chemicals, if needed. Happily, a cold snap came through, including a couple borderline record-low temps and even a bit of snow. That seemed to at least dramatically reduce the beetle action while leaving my plants in good shape. We'll see what happens as it warms back up. The internet tells me that flea beetles are primarily an early summer thing that goes away, so maybe I'll be able to ride it out. Everything else looks disease and pest-free so far, and the homestead is still "beyond organic".

One of my many fans has requested a wide view photo of the garden, so here it is as of May 15th:

This shot is looking SE (towards the upper left of the planting map). I've pulled the compost can out of the way so that the peas are visible on the left. Peppers are going back left, tomatoes front and center, broccoli and kohlrabi middle center, viney plants over to the right side.

Anybody know if you're supposed to thin out potato plants? Each of my seed potatoes were placed about 12" apart, and each one sprouted 3-5 very healthy looking plants. The internet is being surprisingly unhelpful about this. Should I cut them down to one plant per 12"??