Raised Bed Overview & Leafy Greens Status

These are our two raised beds. I used to plant dahlias on the left (sometimes with herbs in front, like that funky rosemary in the corner) and may continue to do so in the future but this year I think I might grow food there instead. I have already planted strawberries around the perimeter (as mentioned in yesterday's blog post) and I have (if I remember correctly) three vegetable plants on order, to be delivered in May. As the lettuce and Swiss chard should still be growing in the right bed at that time it makes sense to put the new vegetables on the left. I never did take last year's dahlia stakes out but I hope to remember to do that soon.

I tried to upload a close up of the Swiss Chard plants on the right but after more than four fails I'm guessing it's just not going to happen today. They are the little green things visible on the far end of the right side of the bed. There are either 15 or 16 separate tiny plantings, all from one small pot that I'm guessing was meant to hold four starter plants. They're really tiny. I don't expect most to survive but if at least four do, I'll be happy.

So that right side raised bed has, clockwise from the top left of the bed, purchased Swiss chard seedlings, purchased green lettuce starters (4, though one looks like it got munched on last night and might not survive having all its leaves eaten off), and two rows of romaine lettuce seedlings that I planted. I'll share the rest of the close-up photos that loaded successfully so you can see better.

Above is the green leaf lettuce. I think two of them look good. One looks questionable (far left) and the one at the top right is the one that was eaten last night.Whatever critter did the munching sure has fast radar as I only planted them yesterday.

This is a super close up of the romaine lettuce seedlings. I only noticed them for the first time yesterday, and I've been looking every day, so they're now two days old. That funky larger piece of green is probably some mint that I missed so I'll have to pop outside and pull that out once I finish this post.

This is an overview of the two rows of romaine lettuce seedlings. The different color brown reminded me that I did sprinkle in some of the Espoma seed starting mix in with the raised bed soil when I originally planted them. Either that or I planted them in the raised bed soil and then lightly covered them with the seed starter mix. I'm not sure which,  but there's definitely a bit of it in there.

The soil doesn't look as nice around the romaine seedlings because at the time I planted them, we didn't have access to any compost. But my husband found some for sale at Homestead Gardens the other day so he bought it and topped the rest of the two beds with compost for me (everywhere except on top of the seedlings I planted). The compost is much nicer than the old soil and if I understand the bit I've learned from Charles Dowding, eventually it'll work its way down and nourish the whole bed. I think last year in late spring the bed was rejuvenated with half compost and half potting soil but I did a bit of succession planting in the vegetable side last year and it really needed the fresh compost.

That's all for today. Thank you for visiting! May God bless you and all you grow!