my okra
It’s much to early in the season to have had three fails already, but somehow I managed to do it. I definitely didn’t expect that my okra and watermelon experiments would make it – these are plants that need to be planted in June when our lovely pain-in-the-ass Zone 4 is most amenable to them – but I am a little surprised that my grape plant did not make it through the last week of very cold weather. I got it at my local Lowe’s store, and so I guess I’m going to have to get a new one altogether. I’m fairly sure that the plant was “guaranteed to grow!” Oops. Maybe that speaks volumes about my gardening capabilities. We shall find out come round-2 of grapes.
So-as not to get discouraged, here are some of the successes that I have so far:
Root Veggie Germination Success
1) some of my root vegetables are germinating! I’m not sure which ones, and I’m really hoping more of them do, but for now it’s awesome that a few of them have germinated despite the awful weather.
Pea plant successes
2) I planted my pea plants around April 15th, and since then we’ve had very few sunny days, and of course cold and snowy ones…the pea plants are doing great!
3) Last year I had all of my vegetables in the raised bed. One of the Chiggogia beets miraculously produced seeds over the summer (which usually takes two years), and many of the seeds fell and overwintered in my raised bed! Now I have little baby beets growing already that have dealt with the weather fine, and will be ready to harvest by the summer heat.
4) The conversion is going well so far, and as soon as we have good weather on the weekend, I’ll likely be able to git ‘er done:
Conversion Success
Asparagus Success - at least one of the seven plants so far 
5) My asparagus from last year is coming up again, even though I moved it from the backyard to the raised bed. The stalks are still pretty small, but it looks healthy. Yesterday I microwaved a couple of them just for kicks and, and…shocker…they tasted like delicious asparagus! I did plant 7 other asparagus rhizomes at the beginning of April and haven’t yet seen any signs of life above the soil, but yesterday I dug around one of the rhizomes and found roots starting to take hold below the soil.
5) My kale seeds are germinating as well! At least I hope it’s kale…and not random seeds that got into my “kale bed.”
Kale Germination Success
