Mid-Spring Update

Spring is the time for relocating, replenishing, eradicating and euthanizing various perennials.  I keep an ongoing list of what needs to be done, and while I am weeding and edging, I am also making adjustments to each bed.  I don't think my gardens have ever been in a truly satisfactory condition.  There is always something on the agenda.  While we worked on the beds this year, I was doing figures in my head.  We have approximately 392 feet of straight edges to cut, and another 75 to 100 feet of free form curves.  And 144 railroad ties edging drives and beds which have hatched out a fresh batch of slugs that need to be salted.

We have had a beautiful spring for enjoying bulbs.  I planted quite a few last fall, and looked forward to the first crocuses and hyacinths.

This is the bed on the far end of the raised bed garden.  I planted clumps of large daffodils, with day lillies in between.  I have a list started for more bulbs to plant this fall.

There are some volunteer pansies which I have transplanted and added to.

The garden peas are up.  These were planted very early and have survived a dozen frosts and a foot of snow.  They came out a bit flatter, but none the worse for wear.  Down the center is a row of radishes and carrots, too tiny to note.  Ironically, the only plants I lost to frost this year were radishes.

The garlic is doing very well, and the onions have been planted.  I STILL have onions from last year in storage.  I don't use many, but they have kept longer than I imagined. 

The potatoes have proven very persistent.  I got tired of covering them for each frost, and even though they burned back to the soil line, they rallied and are thriving in the warm weather.

I finally got around to crushing the two catnip plants I dried in the coop over the winter.  They yielded a suspicious looking two gallon bag full of weed leaves!

Mitey Mite is enjoying it immensely

The tree project is in it's last stages.  Tim and Mike power washed the garage which had mud flung as high as the scalloped shingles from the day the trees were felled.

Hooking up the water line involved more men in holes.

Here mike is telling Tim that he "drills like a girl".

We had a HUGE garage sale which took up three bays of the large garage, and six large folding tables.

People were really chomping at the bit to hit the sale circuit and by late morning on day two we were down to two boxes and a couple of small appliances to donate.  Our house, basement, attic, both garages and the garden shed heaved a collective sigh of relief as their dusty corners were relieved of a five year hoard of unused furniture, construction materials, collectibles, antiques and junque.

We earned enough money to pay for four sets of Trex lawn furniture which will set out in a new fire pit area Tim is planning.  They each have holes drilled for sunbrellas.

The cold frame has been put to use.  We aren't using the automatic openers, we're just propping it open each day.  I have some herbs and annuals started, and will soon be filling it with vegetable transplants.  It's greenhouse season again!

Before the snow storm last week, we hauled out these greenhouse panels leftover from a friend's collapsed commercial house two winters ago.  They kept the taters snug under the foot of heavy snow.  Now that the temperatures have warmed again, we added bricks and propped the panels up, two bricks high so air can circulate underneath, and the potato plants are growing like crazy.  They're almost ready for their first hilling.  I have seed potatoes for the other two rows, and as soon as things dry out again, I'll be planting them as well.

The Ides of March

I suppose this could also be called Spring Cleaning Part II. I've been hankerin' to get the last of the old potatoes out of the basement. They did very well. I only bought a new bag from the store two weeks ago because I had run out of taters sizable enough to cut for home fries. Even though they were wrinkly and sprouty, they still made excellent mashed potatoes and I was using them for that. We also still have plenty of onions with a very low percentage being lost to sprouts. I am running low on peas, but am beginning to give away gallon bags of green beans!

So, despite the fact that it is mid-March, and at least 2 months early for the "sensible" planting date for potatoes in our zone, if you had a pile of ugly, wrinkly, sprouty potatoes lurking about in your basement.... would you compost them? Or put them in the dirt and let them take their chances?


We are in the middle of a minimum of 2 weeks of 70 degree forecasts. The soil is warm and workable. When I arrived home from the office today, Tim had just finished tilling the potato bed. I ran right down to the basement and got those taters. I had just enough for one row, half white, half red. I chose the row closest to the side walk, so if the weather changes and they freeze or rot, I can easily pull them out and start over.

It's a beautiful thing isn't it?

I also had two packets of Survivor peas left over from previous planting seasons. So, you guessed it, they went in too. The two rows planted today comprise half of my planned pea planting. I will be ordering more to plant by Good Friday. My mother recalls a year back in the 1960s ("the year Mom and Dad went on vacation"... her father was a dairy farmer, so there was only one vacation in family history to recon with!) that she planted peas on March 5th and got a wonderful crop.

There were a few odds and ends or potatoes left that didn't fit in the row. Those went into two 5 gallon pots on the patio. Those will be easy to save from bad weather should it occur, and they will be ready to pick before the end of potato planting season so I can use my next batch of leftovers to fill them for a second crop.

Spring Cleaning

The robins are back a whole month early, and all the bulbs are up but not blooming. If you weren't watching the calendar, you would swear this was April and not March. We have had a lot of warm dry weather so we are getting a head start on yard work.

I cleaned the old lettuce and remainder of last fall's carrots out and weeded my beds so they are ready for planting.

I trimmed the dead foliage and runners from the strawberry bed and pulled unwanted plant starts between the rows.

I raked all the mulch about to freshen it up and to cover the tender new shoots to protect them from frost.

We lost some tops out of dying ash in the shrubby strip beside the garden so we cleaned the tops out and cut the remaining trunks.

In a lawn surrounded by aging and dying ash trees, that was only the beginning of our game of pick-up-sticks. We took many loads of branches, limbs and brush back to the burn pile.

Speaking of tree projects. There was a strip of trees between the neighbor's drive and our side yard which have always stood in a swampy area. They have been were dying at an alarming rate and losing large pieces. There are few things more startling than sitting in your lawn on a sunny summer Sunday and hearing a huge oak branch thicker than your leg come crashing down without provocation... narrowly missing the garage eaves.

The neighbors had the trees removed, and took the opportunity to run the city water line in from the curb box, so this neat and tidy garden bed now looks like a muddy waste land.

This was my landscape bed, but everything to the left of the whisky barrel was on their land. So the plow and the rocks need to find a new home. The Hosta plant next to the fence is frozen solid in the ground so that will have to wait.

It is hard to describe the havoc that has taken place in that little strip of land over the last couple of months.

You can see how wet it is, so everything has taken place in the worst kind of mud.

After the trees were cut, Tim and neighbor Mike managed to restore some order, and the tree service returned to chip most of the tops.

Then the water line went in. It would have been impossible to trench through all those roots, so the stumps were pulled and hauled away, and the line dug to a meter pit closer to the house.

Many many loads of gravel were brought in and much of the nasty clay was removed to improve the drainage and restore some decent ground.


The property line runs right down this trench, and you can see that Tim has done his best to restore his lawn to pre-war-zone tidiness. We have several stacks of large red oak logs that will be milled into useful lumber, and neighbor Mike has several years worth of firewood to cut up.

When the ground firms up, a proper french drain will be dug down this line and the neighbors will be able to work on putting in a lawn and restoring the edge of their driveway. Then some shade trees will be planted, and before you know it peace and beauty will return. But as you can imagine... everyone is tired of sticks in the lawn.

Passing the winter hours: Puzzles

Another activity to pass the time is puzzles. I enjoy jigsaw puzzles a few times a year. I rarely attempt one larger than 500 pieces. This one I picked up at the antique mall for half price, and it's a bit of a challenge at 1000 pieces. It still had some large chunks put together (thank Heaven!)


I've made it through the awkward stage where you are putting straight edges along the sides to see where you've forced pieces (they angle slightly) and am closing in on the stage where you are sure there are at least three pieces missing. And since this on is used, that could be true!



I've taken a break to wander around the yard in the sunshine checking to see what bulbs are up... daffodils only... and have put some stuffed pork chops and a frozen apple pie from the last of my apples in the oven (thanks Mom). Now, back to the puzzle board.

Book Review: The Dirty Life

Another way a gardener makes it through the long cold winter, is reading gardening books. I have a lot of large, glossy "coffee table" type books to supplement my favorite veggie magazine and seed catalogs, but what I really love is personal experience type books. Garden Novels. I was surprised, when I searched back through this blog, to find that I have never reviewed any books.

The first one I ever read was "The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden"

This is a great book about how a normal middle class person can go insane trying to create, maintain and make use of the perfect kitchen garden. It's a struggle I am now quite familiar with. But a far better book is Animal, Vegetable Miracle, a Year of Food Life.



Animal Vegetable Miracle diaries a family's year long attempt to eat nothing but local food. Food they raised in their garden, and in their chicken coop and food bought from other local farmers. These are the pretty much the only two I reread over and over. I've now got another "read again" book. The Dirty Life a Memoir of Farming, Food and Love by Kristen Kimball. She hasn't written anything else, but she has a website and a blog to be found at KristenKimball.com




The book tells the story about how she fell in love with a free thinking, rather challenging man and left her life as a writer in NY City, gave up her vegetarian diet, and helped him create a "whole diet" CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm in Upstate NY where they farm with horses, feed a couple of hundred "members" and have learned to use all parts of the pig except the oink.

She soon learns there is a lot more to gardening and farming and the far rural lifestyle than meets the eye.

"Did I really think that a person with a genius for fixing engines, or for building, or for husbanding cows, was less brilliant than a person who writes ad copy or interprets the law? Apparently I did... There' s no better cure for snobbery than a good ass kicking."

She also learns to milk cows by hand, butcher chickens, pigs and cows, till crops with a team of Belgians, and get along with her husband-to-be in the process. This isn't just a book about gardening, although they have acres and acres of garden crops this is about farming as a whole and the lifestyle that goes with it.

“‎A farm is a manipulative creature. There is no such thing as finished. Work comes in a stream and has no end. There are only the things that must be done now and things that can be done later. The threat the farm has got on you, the one that keeps you running from can until can't, is this: do it now, or some living thing will wilt or suffer or die. Its blackmail, really.”

And it is about eating locally and seasonally.

"The central question in the kitchen would have to change from 'What do I want?" to 'What is available?"

I thoroughly enjoyed this book right down to the last paragraph. I have to admire her for her resourcefulness and determination. While I would happily learn how to adjust harness and aim a harrow, I don't think I could either make or eat blood sausage. I can certainly relate to her not feeling clean for weeks or months at a time as she toils in the fields. And I can commiserate with the havoc a wayward herd of cows or a runaway team of horses can cause.

I don't often recommend books. Taste in literature is a very subjective thing. But, if you enjoy this blog, you will enjoy any of these three books, and The Dirty Life in particular.

Magazines: Heirloom Gardener

Besides seed catalogs, what is it that gets a gardener through the long cold winter? The answer: Glossy Magazines. And I have a new favorite, Heirloom Gardener. I subscribe to very few magazines, preferring to pick them up at the newsstand depending on how the issue strikes me. Then I usually copy articles and info I like for a ring binder, and give the issue away. I subscribe to Hobby Farms and Hobby Farms Home which I promptly share with my mother. I plan my errands around the release of Organic Gardening so I can check out the latest issue at the "fancy" grocery. Then a couple of months ago I happened to pick up an issue of Heirloom Gardener at Tractor Supply.




I was hooked! I had seen this magazine before back when it was a plain paper (boring) publication with illustrated covers and lots of practical advice. It is put out by Baker Creek which not only does great work offering heirloom seeds from all over the globe, but also hosts a very informative and busy gardening forum called I Dig My Garden. I used to spend quite a bit of time on that forum, and it is still a wonderful place to research questions and ask for advice.

The magazine has been revamped, glossed up, and is now offered at some newsstands, including Barnes and Noble and Tractor Supply. You can even follow them on Facebook. I was lucky enough to stumble across their first release to TSC and am now a subscriber.

Besides articles on gardening and vegetables, they feature other topics of interest such as cheese making, bees, poultry, apples, plenty of recipes and lots and lots of glossy photos! Next time you are at Tractor Supply, check for it. The Spring issue with the tomato on the cover is at the printer now and will soon be on news stands. Search for them on Facebook to keep abreast of the release date. See if you don't fall in love with this magazine too.

Candlemas / Groundhog Day

As the light grows longer
The cold grows stronger
If Candlemas be fair and bright
Winter will have another flight
If Candlemas be cloud and rain
Winter will be gone and not come again
A farmer should on Candlemas day
Have half his corn and half his hay
On Candlemas day if thorns hang a drop
You can be sure of a good pea crop


It is very overcast here in Western NY today so I am hoping for a good pea crop. So I have come out of blogging hibernation to share these curious little facts...

For centuries people have been using animal prognosticators from bears to marmots to predict the coming of spring. There are even clashing calendar systems which state spring should start anywhere from Imbolc (Celtic St. Brigid’s Day February 1st) to the Vernal Equinox (established by the Roman calendar). Some years we go with the Celts. Some years the Romans.


The Romans looked to the Hedgehog. In America, we let a Ground Hog decide, in Serbia they watch the bears. If the bear awakens early from his hibernation, and is startled by meeting his shadow on the way out, he will be frightened back into his den and sleep for another 40 days.

Yawn... now back to my long winter's nap.