First Spring Salad And Other Spring Musings

22 May, 2012 Reply

I probably wrote about this last year, but every year is like the first time when you harvest enough out of your garden to make most of a salad. My spring garden was very limited this year, as the gardens were in such a shambles from the fact that I didn’t have time to clean them out last fall (something I hope to NEVER repeat) and the weather doing funky things. I did manage to get a few of my favorites going and yesterday we had the very first salad with many of the fixings from our own garden.

I had two kinds of lettuce, two kinds of chard, spinach, a couple of sugar snap peas (and when I mean a couple it was exactly two, so we each got one), fennel, rosemary, lemon thyme, garden thyme, oregano, little tiny marigolds called mace which were surprisingly aromatically spice, marigold petals, and wild sorrel ripped from my yard (it is the most invasive weed, but also highly nutritious and tasty). I added some store bought carrots and tomatoes, pumpkin seeds, raisins, and sunflower seeds. Then we drizzled just a little bit of oil and vinegar over it and had an amazing salad.

Over this past weekend I planted my tomato and pepper plants. I’ve got them covered with lightweight frost blanket to protect them from the sun, as I’ve had a really hard time hardening things off with the cloudy, rainy weather that descended on us just in time for the hardening off period. I’ll see if the frost blanket works as well as screening. It sure seemed to really help the earlier seedlings get going well, without being munched by bugs.

This weekend I’ll get in the basil and the few flowers I managed to sprout. This was not a good season for starting seeds, maybe next year. I also hope to move the herb garden to its permanent home this weekend. If the weather holds and I can finish painting the railing of the deck on the side where it’s going, then I’ll be able to complete that garden and get things moved. That will open up most of the back of the house for more vegetables, which I really need. I don’t have space for my big melons and squash, so they will probably go up next to the house this year. Strange place, but I got two new winter squash types that are supposed to be squash vine borer resistant and I really want to try them out. So, I’ll just have big viney things up close to the house this year…Won’t be the first time I’ve planted something in a strange place.

So, the garden is a work in progress. I’ve managed to rope my husband into helping me many mornings for at least a couple hours, so some of the projects are moving much faster and hopefully soon I’ll be ahead of the wave and spending time improving my soil and finishing up the beds I’ve already got started, making a nice inviting and nourishing home for all the plants to come in the future.

Sorry the posts have been scarce lately. I’ve been wicked busy with the yard and a new business I’m trying to get started. Both take lots of time and attention! I hope to return to being more regular now that the garden frenzy is over.

The Trees Are Here

5 March, 2012 Reply

The trees arrived sometime on Saturday afternoon. I found them Sunday morning. No time to even open the box on Sunday. Monday, today, is cold, blustery, with showers, so can’t plant today, argh.

I did open the box. All the trees look in excellent shape. We’re going to dedicate tomorrow to putting all ten of them in. If the winds don’t get too bad we’ll go out today and remark where they’re all supposed to be planted. However, the winds combined with the cold air make it a poor time to plant them. It could damage their roots.

I’ll take some photos while we plant and put together a short video. Look for it on the site later this week. I’ve found that trees are pretty forgiving. They really want to live. I think in all the trees we’ve planted (and that’s over 100) only one or two have died. One, when I bought it, was suspect, but I wanted a cherry tree so badly I was willing to give it a try. Luckily it came with a one-year guarantee, because it didn’t even leaf out. It makes me mad when I can tell that a company, that plants are their business, did a terrible potting job. The cherry tree had been grown in the ground. Then they dug it up and stuck it in a pot. However, since it was in the ground, it had put out major roots and it had hardly any roots on it when I put it in the ground. So few that all the dirt fell away from the root. That’s when I knew they had just yanked it out of the ground and stuffed it in a pot.

The trees I’ve received are bare root, so I need to get them in within the next 3-4 days or they’ll not make it. That’s why tomorrow is going to be dedicated to digging holes. We’ll try both a shovel and the rototiller. I used the rototiller to plant 60 trees in hard as rock clay when we lived in New Mexico and found it a breeze, but the soil here is softer, so we might not have to resort to the tiller.

Why do the trees always arrive when it is blustery?

Harbingers Of Spring

31 January, 2012 Reply

Not even February 1st and the crocuses are already starting to bloom!

Ack! I was outside yesterday and the first crocuses are already blooming! I’m so far behind. I still have bulbs sitting in the storage room waiting to be put in the ground!

Even the best-laid plans can go haywire when you have to work around weather, work, and other obligations.

It looks like I’m already into the spring madness. Seems every year I get myself into the same pickle. I don’t manage to get all the cleanup and planting done in the fall that I need to, so then in the spring I end up getting caught trying to do the rest of the fall stuff and also prepare for spring planting!

How do you deal with it when you get behind in your gardening? Do you have any ideas on how to quickly get such things as cutting back, removing dead annuals, mulching, fall planting, etc., done? This is one thing I’ve never really gotten a “working formula” for and would appreciate you sharing below any comments about your successes, or questions about your problems with keeping a good gardening schedule.