Mountainside Herbal Nursery

Okay, it has been a little while since an update to our blog. Well, the first 5 beds are done in our new raised beds.

Bed 1: Which I talked about last time and our seed and transplanted crops in that bed. That bed has had a few changes since last time. I have added a soaker hose. (For those not familiar with soaker hoses: They are recycled tires made into a porous hose from which the water can seep.) It is not ideal placement in the bed, but it was the best I could do since I was putting it into such a well established bed. There have also been a few plant changes in Bed 1. Due to the early warm weather our radishes were getting close to blooming so I removed them. I replaced them with some left over Zefa Fino fennel starts that were left over in the greenhouse. I also added a few corn salad plugs. I have never grown corn salad before, but I thought I would give it a try.

Bed 2: In bed 2 I have planted legumes. I took the left over Snow Pod pea starts from the greenhouse and planted those. It was really a little late in the season for me to plant peas, but I hate throwing plants out. I also plant my oldest daughter’s rescued mystery bean starts. We don’t know if they are pole or bush beans so I gave them all a little string to climb. In between those two I planted bush beans. I am normally a pole bean person, but I thought I would try something new. The varieties planted in bed 2 are: Oregon II Po d Peas, Blue Lake Pole Beans and Oregon 54 Bush Beans.

Bed 3: In bed 3 I have planted tomatoes. I chose most very small to medium sized fruiting varieties for this bed. When planting these I removed the bottom sets of leaves, added 1 cup of bone meal to each hole and planted each about 1-2 deeper than they were in the pot. I always cage all of my tomatoes so I placed a cage around each. I didn’t not remove the fruit when planting these, which not something I would recommend doing. Not removing the fruit will more than likely give me smaller plants. I also planted my plants fairly close together. This is our first year with these beds so I am not sure how big the plants will get. Next year we may plant our tomatoes differently. The varieties planted in bed 3 are: Red Currant, Yellow Pear, Sungold, Sweet 100, Cabernet, Christmas Grape, Jelly Bean, Roma, and Celebrity.

Bed 4: In bed 4 I also planted tomatoes. We eat a lot of tomatoes in our household. For this bed I chose medium to extra large fruiting varieties. I followed the same procedure as in bed 3. The varieties in bed 4 are: Mortgage Lifter, Brandywine OTV, Kellogg’s Breakfast, Lemon Boy, Cherokee Purple, Polish Linguisa, Black Prince, Aunt Ruby’s Green, Legend, Vera Pepper Tomato, and Pineapple.

Bed 5: In bed five I planted peppers, basil and parsley. I put ½ cup bone meal in each hole and planted each level with the soil as they were in the pots. The varieties plant in this bed are: Peppers- Carmen, Mini Apple, Serrano Del Sol, Early Sunsation, Satsuma, New Ace, Volcano, Fooled You, Shishito, Mexibell Basil- Napoletano, Sweet Mammoth, Lettuce Leaf, Mrs. Burn Lemon, Marseilles, Ararat, Red Rubin, Cinnamon, Superbo, Siam Queen, Serrata Other- Lisette Parsley, Par-Cel, Safir Cutting Celery