Hurry Scurry

 The weather seems a couple of weeks ahead of itself this year and there are moderate temperatures in the forecast so I am trying to get all of my raised beds prepped for planting and annuals either planted up or moved out of their nursery cells into larger pots so they are not as difficult to keep alive.  The raised bed prep involves aerating the soil with a broad fork and raking any new weeds out.  I should be planting both my sweet corn and in ground tomatoes this weekend.  There is always a lot of set up with bringing plant supports and T-posts etc out of storage and distributing them where needed.

Storm Cloud Amsonia

I have been juggling grow thru grids around.  In some cases, as above, they are needed for stem support on tall plants.  In other places then are useful for blocking snoopy deer noses.  Sometimes just putting them over a low growing plant is enough to deter a taste test.  Other times they are needed in addition to repellent spray.  Besides all of the spring set up and planting, there are the usual chores: water, weed, fertilize, protect.  It is a busy time of year.  The busiest.

This morning when I was making my rounds I came across this Giant Silk Moth.  I've never seen one before.  It was even larger (wider) than a Luna Moth.  It was probably dying, as the adults do not eat, they just mate and die within a week.  I moved it from the driveway to the edge of the lawn.  If I collected things like this it would have been a perfect specimen.  It was beautiful.

Ready and Waiting

 We have been stuck in a warm, rainy weather system that won't go away.  In the past week we have had about 2.5" of rain on top of 6 inches in April.  It's wet.  But... it could be snowing.  It could absolutely be snowing.  So I'm OK with it.  It is just the first week of May after all.  And, if I had a traditional in ground garden and was either waiting to till, or had tilled and was trying to work in the mud...

Cole Crops are thriving

My winter project of a wire mouse excluder has been working.  I planted sunflower seeds and put the wire cover over them, shoving it down into the soft soil and weighing it down.  If they don't come for sunflower seeds, they should leave squash seeds alone too.  I haven't even had to resort to adding dryersheets.

Little baby sunflower seedlings

Last year the mice ate all of my sunflower seeds so I am looking forward to having some this year to attract the finches.

Carrots have germinated

The cold frame is chock full of plants.  There are my seedlings, annuals from the Amish greenhouse and mail order perennials that arrived.  I am about ready to start planting things out even if I have to keep frost covers on them because I have more seedlings to move out and some of them should probably be potted up into larger pots for a few weeks which will take up even more space.

I have all of my containers moved out and filled with potting mix.  I think I will actually have enough potting mix to do what I planned with maybe a little left over for wiggle room.  I've used about 150 gallons and still have ten 3 gallon containers to fill for micro tomatoes.

I ended up having to buy Candy onion starts from the greenhouse.  Mine didn't amount to anything, but I will make adjustments and try again next year.

And Oh My Gosh! at least one of my seed potatoes has survived the constant soaking and is erupting through the soil.  I had just about given up on them.  I figured they had all rotted.

The apple trees are in full bloom.

And we are finally trying to grow grass to correct the shape of the landscape bed where we took out the Lilac bush and planted the apple tree.  

If nothing else it has been excellent grass growing weather.

In and Out

 I have been hardening off my seedlings rather than just throwing them out in the cold frame.  I'm working around the house each day so it isn't too inconvenient.  They can be out for several hours each day now and by the weekend they will be fine in the cold frame all day.

The Coleus and Marigolds are out there already.

I am warming the soil for my Dahlias.  The regular soil temperature here is 50F but under the panels I have it up to 64F.

I finally got the Caesar's Brother Siberian Iris planted.  

We decided to remove the brick border.

We got our new mulch and finished mulching.

I am enjoying some of the new to me perennials.

This is Penstemon Onyx and Pearls.  The foliage stayed "green" all winter.

This is Amsonia Storm Cloud

I've had this several years, but it is the first year it has significant blooms.  
It is Lemony Lace Elderberry

The Bartlett branch of the pear tree is blooming.

Both Northern Spy apple trees are full of buds

The later blooming daffodils are opening and there are new variations every day

And the strawberry plants are blooming.  These are first year plants.  I snipped the runners from the neighbor's plants last year.

Spring is under way.

Rain Delay

We are enjoying a quiet, peaceful, April Shower kind of day.  Just what we needed!  A break from landscape clean up.  It is such a gentle rain it makes me wish I had planted something.  But, I am in a spring planting lull.  I am beginning to move things out of the workshop and into the cold frame to harden off.   This is a good day for that.  They won't be too hot and they won't scorch in the sun.  I can just put them out there and relax.  

Yesterday I brought out the El Brighto coleus cuttings I took from my lightly frosted plants last fall. They hung out in the workshop all winter at 55F. They got pretty pale at that temp, but when I turned the heat up to 60 a few weeks ago they colored up real nice and started putting on growth. I deleted a couple over the winter that just didn’t root in well but ended up with 15 gorgeous plants. I cleaned out all of the dead leaves, spread them out into two trays to give them room, and watered them in well.

Yesterday we cut the last landscape bed edge.  We are out of old mulch and waiting for this year's truckload, but we are prepped and ready to roll.  It was a good day to dilly dally and check on the roots of the Linden trees.

We all believe we are not over mulching and creating mulch volcanoes around our trees, but it never hurts to check.  I raked the old mulch away from the trunk flares and checked for any strangling roots.  Each tree had a few that needed to be removed, but nothing too dramatic.  I just used pruners to snip these sections out where they cross the larger roots and gave each tree an apologetic foot rub.

 

A Little Spring Veggie Maintenance

 

Although the heavy snow cover prevented weeds from growing this past winter, the warm weather and sunshine has encouraged them.  I put a heavy layer of compost on my raised beds last fall and there is a fresh crop of little weeds coming up around the edges.  The best way to deal with this is to cultivate them out.  While the beds are empty it is easy.  I just rake over the surface, disturbing the roots of the weed seedlings.

I pick out the worst of the uprooted weeds and leave them to fry in the sun before I throw them out.  I go over each bed about once a week until it is planted for the season and then put on a layer of shredded leaves to block out the sun from any seeds that might still be lying in wait.

I planted some carrot seeds today.  It I grow my carrots in potting mix in containers.  I use last year's reclaimed soil and recharge it with a good amount of balanced organic fertilizer.  I finish the container with a layer of worm castings which are really good for seeds to germinate in.  The rich, loose material is easy for them to set roots into.

I water the soil well then sprinkle the carrots seeds on the surface and firm them in to get good contact with the soil.  I put one variety on each half.

Then I sprinkle a quarter inch layer of worm castings over the seeds. 

 It is a gardening trick to place a board over a row of carrot seeds to help keep them moist and dark.  I cut some round pieces of corrugated the size of the pots and held them down with a brick.  The cardboard can get wet and when I am done with it, it can go in the compost pile.  In about a week I will have to start checking under it to see if the seeds are germinating so I can remove the cover.

While we're here let's check on the lettuce and peas I planted last week.  The lettuce is up, but still no sign of the peas.

One of the pretty spring flowers is the myrtle ground cover.  This entire bed of myrtle started as a spade full from my Dad that I planted underneath the plow.  Now we no longer need to mulch this corner, but the myrtle drowned out almost all of the perennials here and I moved them out bit by bit over the years.

Still Mulching

Yesterday we got a very nice day and made the best use of it.  We are getting about every other day sunny and warm.  Spring is in full swing.

We mulched around the London Plane trees.  We did not bother to cut a new edge around these and you cannot even tell.

We mulched around the front of the house and along the driveway.

While the tractor was out I got the old Siberian Irises dug out from around the wellhead.  These needed a reset because they had a lot of grass encroaching and moss and crap.  I had already dug out some really nice dark blue Caesar's Brother Irises and set them aside ready to go in.  First I wanted to straighten out the brick edging and I didn't quite get to it.

Not today either.

April Showers?

 

Yesterday:  Fresh Snow and BITTER cold winds.

Today: Blue Skies and Warm Breezes

And fresh mulch

The lawns are still so soggy and wet that we are working on weeding and mulching areas we can reach from the driveways.

Spring Property Maintenance

 We have gotten a a lot of rain from these storms sweeping across the country.  I can't really walk across the back lawn.  The rest of the lawns are OK, but it stopped us from tackling any edging and mulching. The next early spring project on my To Do list is to remove the light blue Siberian irises from the well head...

Not a good day for digging.  But an excellent spot for Siberian Irises

... and replace them with some dark Caesar's Brother irises from the sidewalk area we are reworking. 

This nice clump of Irises are no longer where I want them

That project is going to have to wait, but in spring there is always another project to do.  We brought in a few yards of topsoil for repairing spots in the lawn.  We had it dumped up in the area where we took down all those trees and where we are gradually adding grass.  Rather than spend a lot of money on topsoil and grass seed we opted for the farmer's version of lawn repair.  We put down four bales of hay.  There is a lot of orchard grass seed in this hay and we are quite happy to have orchard grass up here.  After we get done using the pile of topsoil for other areas, whatever is left can be spread right there on the gravel and clay spot we dumped it on and covered with hay.

The first part of lawn repair will be filling in these holes.  Its time again for regular maintenance pumping out of the septic tank.  We uncovered the lids for the pumper and will fill the holes back in with fresh soil and plant grass seed.  They are just a little too big and deep to gracefully remove the sod in any way that we could piece it back together, but we could do that too.

Another post winter project - At the entrance to the big garage, we had a paver walkway that was crumbling.  We were tracking all kinds of grit and cement dust into the garage.  When we began to lift them, they completely disintegrated.

Then we had to decide on the easiest way to reconfigure the three that are still in good shape.  These pavers weigh 280 pounds each.  We use a lifter that the neighbor built for us so we can lift three foot pavers with the tractor.  There is a design quirk that makes it difficult to set pavers side by side, but without it there would be no way we could move them at all.

We decided on three in a row instead of a triangular configuration.

And then we started on the big project of the spring...

...removing the orange daylilies from the fence line.

This is hard work, but we need to do it while we still can to reduce the overall amount of work that these daylilies cause over the course of each year.  We got six sections dug out yesterday leaving nine more to go.  Then we will use the remainder of last year's mulch pile to fill in and level off the holes we leave.

Ad now news from the seed starting.  The teeny tiny Portulaca seedlings are putting out their first true leaves.  Portulaca has these weird, pointy, succulent leaves.  In the seedling stage, it takes a camera or a magnifying glass to see them!  They are so small!

And here is the sweet potato slip situation...