By: Stephanie Meyers

It has been busy few weeks at the garden and much has happened since our last post. Harvesting and moving onions indoors took priority last week.

It has been a busy and productive week at the garden! The week started with harvesting the remaining half of our garlic planting. Garlic is dug with shovels and moved indoors to dry for several weeks.

Two beds of tomatoes went into the garden this week. The countdown to harvest has begun! “Days to maturity” are usually listed on seed packets and in seed catalogs.

The big garden task of the week was planting peppers At MKG, this starts with bed prep. Compost was spread on the beds, irrigation tape was placed, and black plastic mulch was laid. The mulch adds more heat and controls weeds.

Planting sweet potatoes was a key garden task this week. We preordered slips from a farm in North Carolina in February and they arrived mid week. Slips are shoots that are started from a mature sweet potatoes. As the picture below shows, they are predominately a green stalk with some leaves and no roots. They often look rough but will thrive when planted.

It was a week of overcast skies and rain. Despite all the wetness, things still moved forward at the garden. Early in the week before the heavy showers, I was able to till several sections in prep for next weeks plantings.

Here in Central Virginia, we had a cold spell last weekend with night time temperatures in the thirties. All our plants survived, and use of floating row cover helped us to protect more sensitive crops. It is exciting to walk into the hoophouse and see not only lettuce mix growing but blooming colorful flowers too!

Our three beehives have been active this week! Photo below captures a honeybee collecting pollen from overwintered kale that has gone to flower. Notice the yellow pollen basket on her hind leg. This is where the bee stores pollen to take back to the hive.