Vegetable Garden Update on Crop Growth

Three weeks after planting the spinach, lettuce, carrot, and pea seeds in the vegetable garden we are starting to see some encouraging growth in most of the crops.

Planting Seeds Error

First, I’d like to address the fact that I made an error in the Planting Seeds in a Vegetable Garden post. I said that we planted four rows of mixed lettuces when we actually planted two rows of the lettuces and two rows of spinach seeds. I apologize for the error. This brought to light an interesting problem that we hadn’t addressed previously: marking your crops. We have decided to place dowels at the head of each row of plants with a tag indicating the type of plant and the date planted in the vegetable garden.

Update on Crop Growth

We have had good success with peas, spinach and lettuce seeds so far and have not had good luck with the carrots. The pea sprouts can be seen up close in the picture at the top of the post. We needed to do some maintenance of the area-clearing clover and other weeds-but the pea sprouts appear to be growing well. In the next week or two we will need to thin out the plants so that they are six to twelve inches apart, but for now we are letting them grow uncontrolled so we can keep the strongest, best plants.

The lettuce and spinach seeds have sprouted nicely, as well. In the picture above the left two rows are spinach sprouts and the right two rows are lettuce sprouts. While they are still small, the density of growth is encouraging. Like the pea sprouts, the spinach and lettuce sprouts will need to be thinned out to ensure proper plant spacing. There are many weeds and grasses still in between the rows of spinach and lettuce, so we need to take action weeding these areas, as well.

Next Steps in the Vegetable Garden

We need to get dirty and do significant amounts of weeding. Given the state that our garden plot started in, we may need to buy weed block to put down in between rows of plants to keep the weed growth down to a minimum. Once the sprouts have grown to a size where it is clear which plants are healthier and stronger we will thin out the crops leaving only the best plants, spaced about six to twelve inches apart depending on the crop.

The plants that we started in the greenhouse unfortunately did not survive a replanting to larger pots. To replace these plants we are going to buy new seeds and start them directly in the ground rather than in pots.