Slow - Construction Ahead

Spring is here and we have a lot of plans for outside improvements.  Some are a carry over from last year.  Some have been rolling over for more than one year.

Why did we not put a sidewalk here ^ to begin with?  It's just begging for a walkway.  And - we're tired of the gravel getting in the mulch and the mulch getting in the gravel/  Never ever put mulch next to gravel.  It will drive you nuts.  Always put a good hard edge between gravel and anything!  Preferably a surface that can be swept.

That is the shortest distance between the garden shed and the compost area.  If it isn't muddy I will cut across the lawn rather than go around the long way down the other side of the garden.  This week I dug out the daffodils and day lilies and set them aside.  Next we will dig out the six inches of nice decaying mulch full of earthworms that runs along the fence and set that aside for compost.

To construct the walkway we have to tear up the patio on the right where the cold frame and a pair of chaise lounges have been.  We need exactly that many (24) pavers to make the new walkway.  And I need another large bed to rotate potatoes and squash into.  The cold frame is reaching the end of it's useful life and is slated for recycling.  We plan to replace it with a greenhouse which will be located about where the above photo is taken from.

After 10 years we have finally gotten the garden shed organized to our satisfaction.Tim put up two deep shelves along the empty wall to get all of the machinery up off the floor.  All of the weed whackers, chain saws and leaf blowers have a home along with all of their maintenance items and gas cans.

Behind the door, the string trimmer is mounted on the wall and so is its battery charger!

Now it won't scoot out of the corner without warning and the charger isn't taking up space on the counter..   The DeWalt battery operate tools are really nice.  Last year we got a Home Depot Father's Day special with a string trimmer and little leaf blower and we use them to trim and blow around the garden shed patios each time we mow.

The stick tools were always tidy, but you can see the deep shelves to the left.  The lower one doubles as a work surface because it is just the right height.

 I bought wire baskets for all of my killing stuff (on the left) and growing stuff (on the right).  It is amazing how much more room there is in the cupboard if you just contain things in a basket.  And instead of rummaging around and making a mess, just grab the basket you want and pull it out into the open where you can access what you're looking for.

Speaking of containing things and more room - the contents of these two containers was just laying on the bottom of the cabinet in a cascading pile, or crammed into my large tool box (which now contains only hand tools).  Lots more room.  The top portion of each container is a divided tray which holds smaller items like rolls of tape and snaps and eye bolts etc.  Tape measure, duct tape and WD-40 are items I reach for quite often.

The Broccoli and Cauliflower MUST be getting bigger.  Right?

Waiting is tough.

Lettuce babies are still pretty small.  I sort of abused these, barely hardened them off and just set them on a patio to fend for themselves but I think I only lost three.

I had a lot of seedlings left over still in the seed tray.  Last night I planted a triple row in the bed which will also have a row of cucumbers.  I don't plan on babying these.  They can thin themselves out.  Hence the triple row.  Survival of the fittest.

Second planting of peas from Easter Sunday is just breaking through.  The established row was planted four weeks before that.

There are mounds of daffodils everywhere but the primrose are looking especially nice this spring.  Still waiting on wood hyacinths.  If I don't put these wire cloches over the primrose both deer and rabbits consider them snacks.

Un-Do Re-Do: The Fence

It's tiresome really, all this maintenance and revisiting projects that you thought you'd done right the first time.  The garden is now 11 years old, and for the past few years, a few of the fence rails had been bowing and twisting.  Tim kept saying "I'm going to replace that one" but in the end, he decided to do them all.

The one pictured above really hadn't warped until last year and then it went whole hog, actually pulling the posts out of plumb.

When Tim tried to remove it, it crumbled into a thousand shards.  He mentioned that he ought to get the receipt and take it back to the lumber yard (because we save all our receipts) and let them know that their product was not satisfactory.  But the week after the lumber yard was wiped out by a tornado.

Thank you Karma.  But that was a little extreme.

The 2x4 rails were replaced with a 2x4 topped with a 2x6 to stiffen them

All of the posts were re-plumbed and the whole thing looks fresh and new

The broccoli and cauliflower still aren't doing much yet.  We've had a few sunny 60 degree days, but today they are under a second frost cover to block the 40 mph north wind from sweeping down the tunnel and flattening them.  The temperatures are in the mid-30s and there are a few snowflakes in the air.  A good day to stay indoors.  I'm satisfied that I have my second planting of peas in, the carrots seeded, and the broccoli, cauliflower and lettuce ready to roll once the weather co-operates.  

My spring planting is all done

It will be greenhouse season soon.  I can't wait!

Looking Forward

This time of year when the weather is so changeable, and the seedlings are so small and vulnerable, and the soil looks so bare, it is hard to believe that anything will ever come of it.  To keep my gardening spirits up, I read through old blogs and look at all the pretty pictures and remind myself that there will be food and flowers in my future.

A Walk Down Memory Lane

Cucumbers 2014

Nasturtiums

Cantaloupes 2014

Dunja Zucchini 2014

Lettuce 2015

2015

Lettuce and Cucumbers 2017

Blue Lake Bush Beans 2018

Toad House and Portulacac

Black Krim Tomatoes 

June

Broccoli 2008

Carrots

It Will Happen

Lettuce Babies

I have 3 trays of lettuce babies started outdoors, 

and 1 indoors to maybe give them a head start

The peas are loving this rain.  I'm going to plant my next batch 

Good Friday which will be 4 weeks instead of my usual 3

There are some Primrose blooming.  I have to keep them 

covered or the deer or rabbits will eat them

And it's Daffodil time at last!

April Showers Bring May Cauliflowers

The Cauliflower and Broccoli had been out for an hour or so a day for several days. The next step would be to put them out in the cold frame under the 50% shade cloth.  Or... I could just plant them in the ground under the shade cloth.  So that's what I did.

A row cover and a shade cloth.  They are doing well.

They had been seeded five weeks earlier so it was time.  Everything I've read about them says they get transplant shock and don't wait more than five weeks to put them out.  So out they went.

I also have teeny tiny baby pea plants

Two and a half weeks after being seeded.  Right on schedule.

This weekend I will put in the second half.

The tomato seedlings and eggplant seedlings have been put into pots.  They won't do much for about a week, but then I expect them to take off.   I don't want them to get too leggy anyway.

The Waiting Game

This is the time of year when there seems to be a load of work to be done but you have to wait to do it.  Is it spring yet or not?  Will we get a foot of snow?  Is it going to be mild and we will regret not planting lettuce early?  Isn't there something that I should be doing?

Last Sunday I planted the first set of peas.  With peas, timing isn't as critical as say tomato plants.  If the soil isn't the right temperature, or the weather isn't optimal they just hang out waiting to sprout until they know it's time.  They can even be snowed on a little.  Peas are very self-sufficient.  Now I have to get the pea fence out of storage which is the biggest chore of planting peas.  The more peas I plant, the bigger chore it is!

This is where my gardening year begins - the basement workbench

This is my first time for starting broccoli and cauliflower seeds and it is going well.  The reason I am going to try them this year is that I evicted the strawberries from the caged bed and I knew it would be the perfect place for cole crops because the hardware cloth will keep the butterflies out of it and if that doesn't work I can easily pin a floating row cover over it.  Worm free broccoli!  Sign me up!  I have tried both broccoli and cauliflower in the past with marginal results.  This year I am making a concentrated effort to grow some really nice ones.  In addition to the strawberry bed, which will only hold about a dozen plants, I plan to put 4-6 plants under hoops in the main garden.

Broccoli and Cauliflower starts that will
be ready to begin hardening off next weekend

In addition to the broccoli, cauliflower and a 6 pack off eggplants, I have just seeded tomatoes a couple of days ago.  They are under a dome and on a heat mat with their own light set up waiting.

We've already gone through and done our late winter cleanup.  We've removed the oak leaves that built up over winter, turned the compost pile, loosened the mulch in the landscape beds, added mulch around the daffodils and peonies and just generally gone around and picked up sticks and raked. 

This clematis vine had overwhelmed it's small store bought trellis.
We stapled this extra cattle panel up behind it.  Rather than cut the panel,
we left it whole so we haven't wasted a whole panel if we get another idea

Now is the time to make sure we completed winter-downtime projects like organizing the garden shed and contemplate which of the spring projects we are going to tackle first.  While we enjoy doing things ourselves, some of our projects are really tough to figure out, plan and source.  It would be nice if we could just picture it in our head and wave a wand over it.  Even better would be computer functions like Undo, Redo, Delete and Revert to Saved.

Happy Valentines Day

I thought I'd do a winter update with vintage Valentines.  

It's been COLD!  I hope this is killing all the bad bugs.
We've been happily hibernating.

We're still enjoying apple pies from our over-achieving little tree.
Every apple it produced went int a pie and the pies went into the freezer.
All we have to do is take one out and pop it into the oven.

We've been making our own Korv (Swedish sausage).
We've gotten so good at grinding meat that instead of paying higher prices for ground beef,
we buy roasts on sale and grind our own.

I'm working on my seed orders.
I'm making silly decisions and planning to grow things I've sworn I wouldn't plant again.
I'm going to plant sweet corn and pumpkins and winter squash.
And Broccoli.  Silly me.

I will probably end up with loads of surplus veggies

Peas.  I've ordered way too many peas.  Several new varieties.
I just love peas!  We will run out of peas before we run out of anything else
so it makes sense to plant as many as possible

So that's what we've been up to.  Since I am planting eggplants and bell peppers this year, my seeding will start in a few weeks.  I'm also going to seed my own broccoli and several varieties of cauliflower.  I've never tried that before and have rarely grown either one so that will be a learning process.  They are cool weather crops so need to go in early.  I'll start them in a couple of weeks.