Harvested greens and pretty flowers

Today was  a really great sunny and warm day so of course I spent as much time as I could in the garden. Picked some asparagus for dinner, some broccoli side shoots from overwintered plants (main  head will bloom), few chives and scallions and greens - salads, parsley, spinach, arugula, sorrel and kale.

And here are some shots of the pretty flowers, shrubs and trees that are currently in bloom.

Morel Season started!

Doing very happy mushroom-picker dance - the new Morel Season is officially here and I picked 10 first black ones in the back of the property. Definitely going hunting for them over the weekend!

First asparagus!

One of the best perks of having a garden - walking outside whenever you want to add greens to your meal and picking them fresh straight for your plate. Today's picking was few first asparagus and a snippet of parsley to finish up steak.

Just a bit more time and we'll be using many more greens for salads and snacking.

Greens and flowers

I know I'm not keeping up on posting as frequently as I should have been, but here are some updates on what's happening in the garden. Some of the seedlings that I planted were hard hit by deep freeze so I raided our local nursery for replacements.

Some still survived so I have both planted and growing.  Picture on the left are my seedlings; the right is the nursery - both beds have salads, broccoli, cabbages, cauliflower etc. The bed on the right also has onions and steaks indicating where tomatoes will be planted about a month from now - in Mid May.  Then here are some shots of newly woken up goodies - kale that was seeded last year, peas, radishes, asparagus etc.  Strawberries all have flower crowns so I hope for good results. Sorrel, Garlic chives all came back again this year.

Some of my overwintered broccoli and cauliflower started developing heads - they'll go to flower and seed this time.

Tiny bush of red Currants survived its first winter and has buds! it's hiding in the bunch of tulips. Next to it is nice red cabbage starting to form head; and then oddly shaped bed of garlic (don't ask me why half grew and half didn't).

Our blueberries are doing really nice and budding up, overwintered kale is gorgeous and first potatoes woke up at the same time as asparagus.

And then we have tons of flowers blooming and others waking - daffodils, hyacinths, tulips are blooming; peonies and bleeding heart are not far behind.

We have two new additions this spring - a new Peach and Nectarine trees to replace the ones that died. Let's hope new location will be better for them.

And our Apples, Plums, Cherries, Figs, Persimmon, Mulberry and walnut trees seem to survive the winter and budding up as well. On the new garden blackberry and raspberry bushes are also growing nicely mixed with grapes and more blueberries. Now to watch them grow and hope for good results.

 

Starting Sweet Potato slips

Last weekend I used 3 tiny sweet potatoes that were too small to eat to start my sweet potato slips. As you can see I'm using toothpicks to hold them above the glass rim that is filled with water. Only few days in and plenty of roots are already formed and first leaves starting to form.

Hopefully it will give me several more slips so I can have at least dozen plants. We really don't need more than that for our use.

Growing in the house...

Now that the cold-loving transplants are outside in the garden, warm loving next-gen started in the house - tomatoes and peppers. Peppers are still sleeping, but tomatoes took only 3 days to germinate. I guess they're trying to play catch up with Mother Nature. 

I labeled the last rows of each  flat and made a grid list on the paper to keep track of all varieties - this way labels won't get in a way with lights. Once they're big enough I'll place labels by each plant.

Another thing that I've been playing with - home grown button mushrooms. It's fun to watch as experiment but I won't advise to make it for food supply - just too darn expensive to get a kit like that.

In couple of more weeks I'll go hunting for real mushrooms in the woods - Morels are about to come in the season. South areas like Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Washington, CA, Oregon, South and North Carolina, and even as far as Ohio folks have reported them in, so we're not far behind.