Another year…another growing season upon us here on Long Island. This will be our year 13 growing vegetables at the Greenlawn Organic Gardens in Huntington Town, in Suffolk County New York.

As we do each year in late February, we started the tomatoes and peppers in the small greenhouse that we sit in our dining room near the double glass doors. The sunshine warms the small enclosure and heats up the seeds. Within a week or so we have plenty of seedlings popping up. Tomatoes and peppers won’t be transferred to the garden. plot till around Mother’s Day so they’ll be spending a bit of time here at home to start the season.

Last week they made their first foray outdoors to begin the “hardening process”.

This week we went over to the plot to get started cleaning up the winter mess. The garlic we planted last September is now 12-15 inches high and looking good and strong. The very mild winter was kind to the plants. Unfortunately the mild weather was also kind to the weeds that were covering the garlic bed. Removing them became job one as we started to get the garden into shape .  We mixed up our organic weed killer solution of epsom salt, Dawn dish soap and white vinegar.  Works like a charm every time.  It won’t hurt people, birds or beneficial insects but man it absolutely destroys the weeds. Spray that on unwanted growth and overnight it’s dead.  Then you can easily rake it away.

Next I checked the blueberry enclosure for weeds poking through the newspaper and pine needle ground covering we use around the bushes. I also check that the screen is in good shape to keep out the animals, both the 4 legged and 2 legged varieties! The blueberry bushes are covered with sprouting leaves right about now.

We just put in a dozen heads of romaine lettuce both red and green, some brussels sprouts, mesclun greens, beets and snow peas.

Lastly we got our first pound of fresh asparagus shoots.

Next week we’ll be mulching the garlic to keep the weeds from coming back and we’ll be expecting more asparagus.