Warm and dry.

I hate to complain though,  its actually too dry.  We have had no rain for over a month if i remember correctly. Its been windy also...  not breezy...windy.  Anyway,  its so dry that authorities have asked people to not even use gas grills for outdoor cooking.  Unfortunately,  this weather just screams out for grilled food...  luckily we don't have  a water shortage,  its just the old grass and dry brush in the woods that have them worried. Once things leaf out  and green up, it won't be so risky.  We have a 50% chance of rain for Thursday and a 10% for Friday.  I hope we get some.  Luckily the majority of my plants are drought tolerant.

As far as the plants go,  things are looking great.  They are pushing out leaves and sizing up.  The goji already have tiny flower buds about the size of this o.
The rough looking blueberry at least looks like it will recover.  The others are getting ready to bloom.  I think i'll cover them with something this winter.

The Sparkle strawberries came in on Saturday and were planted in the big terracotta looking pot.  I ordered 10 but got 11,  so that was nice.



The Ancient sweet peppers on the right look so good compared to the ones i sowed weeks before.  Basil and borage on the left:


Older peppers, eggplant and parsley:




Tomatoes


Tea hibiscus and green shiso.  the red never came up.


Small asparagus harvest


Still having to bring the seedlings in at night.


Its supposed to stay in the 40's tonight so maybe i won't have to take them in.  Supposed to be in the 70's today,  yay!

I got the cukes, squash and melons planted on Sunday

Catch-up

Didn't i say i was going to plug in the list of what i seeded the other day?

So i'll do it now:

Tomatoes
4 Pruden's Purple
2 Sweet Chelsea
4 San Marzano Lampadina
4 Banana Legs
4 San Marzano from Providence Acres
3 Aunt Molly'sGround Cherries (also from Providence Acres)

Everything is up except 2 Banana Legs and the 4 Aunt Molly's

Kale
3 Red Russian
3 Kai Lan Queen
1 Starbor   (only had one seed left!)
3 Peacock Red- Flowering
3 Fringed Formula- Flowering
3 Teasel
2 Saltwort

None up yet.  They are outside anyway.  In the weirdly warm weather  we've been getting.

I may rethink the teasel. I often wanted it for a couple interesting seedheads, but further research calls it a potentially noxious weed,  and i had assumed this biennial plant was an annual and not hardy to my area.

I am going to try and make room for some Job's Tears and Leonotis,  Job's Tears have such pretty seeds for beading and i love the Leonotis flowers.

So...  i'll probably stuff  some Job's Tear seeds in the Teasel pots and call it good.  Same with the Saltwort.  Further  research on that shows seed viability of about 4 months. {facepalm} My seeds are 2 years old.  Bleh.

My Carmine Jewel cherry trees came today.  They look pretty good actually. Small,  but fully leafed, sturdy little things.  I am not disappointed.  Wish i could post a pic,  but like i mentioned before,  i can't find my camera-to-laptop cable or my minidisk adapter.

The grapes are now waking up and getting full sun much of the day.  The apple is getting pink buds.  The blueberries are getting ready to blossom. The prune plum has leafed out, lilac buds are the length of my index finger, grape buds are swelling, the Autumn olive is looking good, the asparagus is almost 2 feet tall (can be harvested next spring).  Well,  i think that is it for today...

Found: The Sun

It was amazing yesterday.  Spent much of it outside with the little one, kiddie pool,water hose and assorted outdoor toys.

I took some pictures of what was going on in the yard and garden....

Stanley prune plum is really waking up now

unnamed elderberry

Nova elderberry

York elderberry, at least it should be,  it had lost it's tag before i got it

Edelweiss

Reliance

Frontenac

Marechal Foch

Edelweiss 2, the one that got moved earlier this spring

Asparagus and Welsh onions

Horseradish

Jerusalem artichokes

bumblebee, making up for lost time in the pollination department

apple tree, looks more like a weeping tree. I may need to prune it back more?

rhubarb, taking off as usual

first of the lilacs opening

mixed radishes sprouting

Today is looking good so far, clouds are beginning to filter in so it may turn out hazy for the rest of the day... i'm hoping that's as bad as it gets. For now, its sunny and warm. I have already had the youngest out to play for about an hour until she started getting cranky.


I took a look at the onion bed and i see nothing onion-like coming up. It would sink if all my onion seed fails- but i decided to plant green beans there if that turns out to be the case.

I've been mapping all my garden spots lately- to exercise my obsession with grids and charts...  i'll have to go get detailed measurements of my mini vineyard so i can get them drawn up (hopefully nap time comes early).  The grapes' trunks will get too big for their tags eventually, same with the berry plants getting too bushy. If i map them out i won't have to worry so much about which is which when i really need to know!  I wanted to maks some decorative tags out of Fimo,  but i may never get to it and if i do, hey won't last many years.

Neatening things up

I have been threatening to do something about the flowerbeds and the grape row since last spring.  I finally got the bed in front of the house taken care of, but there were more things to do.

That is what i have been doing for the last week.

This bed was full of all sorts of things that were getting choked out by goldenrod. I actually made a real effort to weed all of it out last year, but it was a losing battle.  Once that stuff takes hold, its all over the place.  I'm going to miss a lot of plants that were in there, but i have to make the sacrifice.  I couldn't take care of it and it would be slowly destroyed anyway.  So i dug in and did it.

This is where i had to take a rest on this one.  I really needed to get to the grape row started too.  I wish, once again, that i had done before pics, but if i really need them i can look at pics of previous tears.

So, this is after digging out every bulb and iris that remained. I still need to Roundup the surviving goldenrod and lay down the landscape fabric, then mulch.

Right side, from my side window looking toward the nice neighbors' house

.

And the rest of it.

I gave our nice neighbors first dibbs on whatever they wanted from it, they took quite a few things which made a good dent in the work i needed to do.  I dug out another two boxes of plant material, which went to my mom.  After so many weeds choking things for the last 2-3 years, there wasn't as much left as i thought there would be.


Now the major project which has taken many days, was the grape row.  I had to remove all the landscape fabric i laid down last year because the wind blew it so hard it tore away from everything i had holding it.

I had to move one Edelweiss grape from the right end to the left end because it was in the right spot to get almost no sun.  So now the grape row is bookended by the Edelweiss vines.   That shadier spot will get 2 new Elderberry plants that should arrive by UPS on Wednesday.

The project ended up being more ambitious than i had expected.  It needed a string line pegged in, then the edge cut in... the landscape edging was very challenging to install and i got it as perfect as i had patience for.  I'll fine tune it as summer goes on.  Then the fabric went down.  A calm day began to get breezy right about then, lol.

About 14 bags of mulch later....

Still not quite finished.  I have more fabric, but we need another 12 bags of mulch at least to finish this end and the other bed.

The extra part that juts out is for the dwarf Stanley Prune plum.  I hope there is enough room for it and i'm glad i got a dwarf.  That tree is coming in the shipment with the elderberries and also 3 Lingonberry plants.

My dad came over on Sunday and tilled the garden. Hubby acquiesced to the extra 6 feet i wanted. So now my garden is about 40'x30'- i'll get a more accurate size when the time comes to string line for the rows.

One more tilling is needed and then i can shovel out the walking rows and get the row cover supports put in.  First planting time is in about 3 weeks or less.  I can do radishes first and shortly after that,  broccoli, cabbage, onions and other such things can go in.

The asparagus is coming up and so is the horseradish

I also managed to get in the first spraying on the apple tree on Sunday.

I also completely removed the silky dogwood (gave to my parents), then pruned the hydrangea and the purple smoke tree.  The smoke tree is also being trained to grow toward the opposite side of the bed.

I am so glad i have made headway in the fruit and berry gardens.  It was tormenting me in my sleep.  It will be a huge relief when it is done and the weed-blocking landscape fabric and deep mulch should reduce weeds to almost nothing.  Any weed that pokes its head up along the edges will be easy to cap off with Roundup.

Looking forward to a Summer of moderate maintenance.

April showers...

Not much to journal about today other than rainfall.   We got about 2 inches of it over the weekend. Temperatures stayed above freezing, but not by much.  There is no longer any snow or ice in the yard and the angle of the sun is moving in a way that the grapes are getting more direct sun.  The currants are on the brink of leafing out.  The blueberry plants are sporting ever-growing leaf buds,  the elder hasn't woken up yet, but does not appear dead- just slow.
The daffs are in full bloom, the crown imperials are budding and will bloom soon.  I have emailed my mom offering her all the flowers from both front beds so i can replace them with berry bushes.  I may move the blueberries to that area or get some other things-  the autumn olive that i  grew from seed is still indoors (about 10" tall) and will likely be planted in the side garden.  I need to start some goji, sea buckthorn, seakale and other berry plants... i have been saying i'm going to do this for months, eventually it will happen!

Hubby started to rake the garden debris into a pile in the middle of the garden to burn it. Though the rain had soaked everything and fire danger was very low, the wind picked up and we decided it wasn't a good day for it.  So we put the fire out halfway through.  If we could just get a day without this annoying wind, we'd be able to do it.

Its been chilly and mostly cloudy today, but the warmup is well on its way.  I have been checking the small asparagus bed daily now,  but nothing yet. Its likely too early.  The Welsh onions are perking up nicely and the chives at the corner of the side bed are coming up. 

I decided i should try blanching the rhubarb this year.  It seems to be the thing to do- so i'll give it a go. I bet it will be nice!  I used my 30 gallon, black rubber tub.  It won't blow over easily and is completely light-proof.


So that's it today!

Spring is experiencing a slight delay...

Or maybe its not.  I'll have to look back and see what i complained about last year in regard to snowmelt and temperatures.  I'm sure i'm just being impatient.  The forecast is for temps in the 30s through the rest of the week.  We got about 5 inches of new snow that turned out to be less slushy than expected.  If the sun is strong it might melt quickly but if it stays cloudy it may not.

The Rose Orach sprouted- i noticed this yesterday. All the other seeds are still sleeping.

I'm still in the process of deciding what i will grow this year. I'm considering crossing the leeks off the list.  I'm not sure my method of planting would suit them.  Their need for a long growing season is discouraging.  I tend to plant in wide rows and leeks need to be 'hilled', and this will be difficult in wide rows because the soil i would need to use to build up around the leeks will be inhabited by more leeks.  I won't have a spare spot in the garden to dig out soil to hill them up and then i'm not sure how much yield...  They are expensive at the store and because of that i don't use them much- which means i can technically live without them. Also, if they don't size up to what i see in the grocery store i'll be disappointed- and its unlikely they will grow that large.  In the recipe i use them in, i use 3 at a time. My garden planner allows for 50 plants in the space i intended for them.  Not sure if i'll ever use that many before they go bad- and i don't plan to overwinter any plants in the garden, and and and i don't know if hubby will get on board with using the cold side of the basement as a root cellar.

I think i should stick to what i know- tomatoes, peppers, onions, eggplant, summer and winter squash, green beans, brassicas, herbs and some lettuces.

Experimentation will be limited to  houseplants.  Speaking of which- the buds on the hoya are sizing up:

Maybe not dramatic, but i noticed.


I took a look at the garden the other day. It had melted enough that i could locate where the kale and chard had been and other things too.

I've read that kale can sometimes overwinter- but i don't think it happened for me, lol.


But it looks like at least one of my Comfrey crowns did ok. Of course its way early to expect much, but i found a bit of green

I can't wait to see how my asparagus does this spring.  According to Steve Solomon, asparagus from seed can be harvested as soon as the second year as long as the spears are 3/4 of an inch in size.  But i don't have any idea if they will be that large and anyway i'll need to let them grow freely so i can locate and remove the female plants.  Doing this prevents the plot from going to seed, the seed germinating and leading to overcrowding- which leads to the demise of the plot.  With only male plants left and good fertilizing a plot can last about 50 years.

I never did try harvesting the horseradish i planted last spring.  I have tried planting it before in my parents' garden.  When i dug it up it was full of holes from soil bugs so i'm curious to see what i'll get this fall.

Yesterday i heard robins for the first time this year. It sounded like they were squabbling over some territory.  Despite the snow it shouldn't be long until the weather fits the part of the season i like so much.

I am the Weed Warrior....!

I almost feel victorious.

I finally got everything weeded and i do mean everything.  With varying degrees of thoroughness, the Jerusalem Artichokes i sort of slacked on, but after almost 3 hours of weeding i didn't care.
The rest of the garden was done as thoroughly as i possibly could get it. It was a great day for weeding, cool and overcast... i think i still got a sunburn.

It kinda stinks that the carrot and parsnip beds look so bare when everything else looks so good.  I left the weeds in the aisles sonce i don't feel like doing the extra work of removing them.  I might later but not now.

I don't usually take the row pictures from this end of the garden, but i felt like doing that this time.

Now that they are weeded, i can actually see my peppers and eggplants.

Burdock and then Globe Artichokes... the artichokes don't seem to be going anywhere yet.  The Summer Squash are small too...

Salsify, surviving brusseld sprouts and cauliflower plants, then beans...Provider bush beans.  I forgot the name the other day.

Birdhouse gourd, i love the leaves on that plant. They are velvety and soft, not like summer squash, melon or cucumber leaves which are spiky and irritating.

I have native ladybugs all over the place here, i like them better than the asiatic ones- the type that swarm and sometimes bite.  These are rounder and have a larger black 'head'.

Here is a ladybug larva

And i found this yellow ladybug eating yellow aphids.

My experiment with the celery base is working, cause its really coming out of the soil now

Marechal Foch with flower buds.

i hate the dust in my camera lens.



While i was out weeding, i found a few spots where i think the fence is too high.   I think the groundhogs are just walking right under it. I found that they have eaten the leaves of my horseradish almost to the nubs...  so i might go use roundup and totally re do the fence and include the far part of the garden that i didn't think i had to worry about-- the JA patch and the Asparagus bed.
I thought we had gotten it low enough to stop them last week, but the rain compacted the soil and they got under it again.  So i'll try this one more time and see if that is what was happening...

Who knows.

More planting out?

Some of the melons have sprouted and weather is actually looking very good. Overnight lows for this weekend are expected to be in the 50's.
So, i may plant some of the sprouted melons today or within the next day or so.
I wanted the melons to be under hoops, but the row i want them in is one that i didn't get hooped.  I did cut a piece of row cover for it and it has been on the row,  hopefully holding in warmth. I need the melons protected from bugs right away until they get big enough to survive some bug damage.

So, even though the row cover is supposed to be light enough to put right on the plants... i don't really want to because melons are put on hills, we get wind that might pull and drag the covering enough to snap off little seedling stalks.

This means i need to come up with something to prop the cover up that won't tear or snag it.
I thought about using a few milk jugs with the bottoms cut off, but i don't have any saved and they block too much light. Soda bottles with the bottoms cut off might work, but not for as long as i want.
I got a pack of 24 2' bamboo stakes at "The Tree" the other day.
Hubby had to use an old bike inner tube to patch a leak a while ago.
I remember Mr Wizzbang using slices of innertube as elastics for his carved giant clothespin style hoop clips...  and i think if i maybe cut some bands from the inner tube and wrap 3 stakes together, i can spread them over the seedlings like mini tipi.

Like this:

And then put a cup on top so the sticks won't snag the cover.

It should last just long enough for the melons to get a good head start.



*****

Well, its about 12:30 now. I went out to try and do some work.  I managed to section off that final wide row. I decided i needed a foot path to be able to get in there on both sides of the row. Its still about 5' wide, but now i can get in to hopefully train the squash vines to head in the direction of the Jerusalem Artichokes and the fence instead of the next planted row.

I got that done and i planted 20 odd Mary Washington Asparagus seedlings. The two Horseradish roots went in too. But that is it.  I am still so sore from the other day! I really hate this.
I despise being in pain and i hate not being able to do things. Its not like i'm going out and doing something indulgent. Yes, i think gardening is fun, but i guess i wish it wasn't so painful. Its too small of a garden for me to not get things done in.
I tried to make the hills for the melons.
Its beautiful and sunny and warm. Nice breeze.  Perfect day for being out there digging in the dirt.
*sigh*
ok...pity party over.

Anyway.

I do have the new set of sprouts getting acclimated to the sun.
I have to be careful, i haven't had good luck doing this in the past!

I wanted to plant out the onion seedlings and the shallot seedlings... maybe tomorrow :oD

Its so  nice out i am tempted to plant the tomatoes that survived the frost, the hubbs bought me a few more tomato cages.  I wanted to put together some sturdier braces for tomatoes, since some are indeterminate,  but we don't seem to have anything suitable for it right now.  I have always used cages with acceptable results.  I'll look into trying something different for next year.

Oh, my berry seed order came in. The one from eBay with the fern spores in it. Things look great.  Small quantities though, but prices averaged a $1.10 for each item and she combined shipping which was only $2. 
I hope i get to report impressive germination rates. I love adding people to my Favorite Sources list.

******

I need to get the 5 gallon brewing bucket cleaned ans sanitized so i can get the wine must in there.  I hope my dishwasher can get them clean all the way to the bottom.  I intend to use the glass carboy as a secondary, but it will be easiest to use the bucket for the first stage while the flowers are in it.  The flowers  are to  stay in for a week, then they have to be strained out and squeezed well.
I'll have to siphon the liquid  off its sediment, from carboy to carboy to clarify it in stages, then when it is clear enough i can age it in bottles.
I'm envisioning a color like herbal tea- chamomile or mint leaf.  Would be nice to see purple, but there are no pigments for it.  I noticed the flowers turn a gray blue when they hit the boiling sugar water.

I also need to clean out some cell packs for starting my berry seeds....