Salads and Radishes harvest

Another couple of busy weeks flew by, and I really need to set aside time to do some blogging. Garden is producing, every day I pick greens for eating and even few radishes for snaking.

Something is always in bloom around the house, which makes me happy as I get to see busy bees flying around from flower to flower. They can use all the help they can get with nectar after hard winter.

At the farm things are really speeding up, and I've spent two weekends planting potatoes, onions, tomatoes and peppers, asian greens, beans, carrots, beets, melons, brassicas. Next weekend I'll be planting popcorn and decorative corn (not a big fan of eating type), squashes, cucumbers, basil, more tomatoes and more peppers.

During the week I'll go to the community garden and plant that area out. It's a busy time for everyone. How does your garden grow?

Blooming, budding and first harvest

It's been a hectic few weeks and I haven't had a chance to really keep up with the blog, but the work in garden in spring doesn't end. Everything is in bloom, trees budding and flowers are in overdrive after long winter. Unfortunately Mother Nature still trowing hissy fits - last week of April we got surprise snow/ice showers, and this week it was 85 degrees. Insane. Looks like we skipped spring season and went straight to summer.  But either way, I'm happy with everything growing. Weeds and all. And some flowers and fruit trees in bloom. I'm really enjoying my dafs and tulips.. Some of them are just gorgeous.

In the front the azaleas are in full bloom, and inside sweet potato slips are growing like crazy. Another few days and I'll be tearing them off and starting to root in soil.

 

Cherry Tree is showing a lot of promise of actually having a chance to harvest fruit (if birds and squirrels will let us have any),  together with nectarine that is LOADED with flowers and even few on peach tree. I will pull most of these off though, because the trees are very young and I don't want to overwhelm them. Will try to keep couple of piece of fruit to see how they taste.And the red currant bushes are also loaded with fruit, but given how much they were damaged by caterpillars last year I don't dare to keep hope for this time around.

 

First harvests of asparagus and first greens have been picked - deliciousness!  There really is nothing better than fresh right off the bed spring greens.

 

And of course first few morels were picked as well. Dratted deer got most of them, but I did find few untouched.

 

 Really wish we had a VERY TALL fence all around the entire property to keep them out and minimize damage - it's insane how much they eat EVERYTHING in the property. Anything outside of fenced area - cherry, walnut, blueberries, roses, tulips, raspberries - all have tremendous damage :(

Finally planting time!

This was the first weekend when we went above 60 degrees, and yesterday even reached 67. So I checked my soil and it was finally warm enough to start planting some of my cold-seasoned veggies: Peas, chards, beets, onions, potatoes, spinach, arugula, lettuce and asian greens like mustards, chinese kale and bok choy.  Potatoes were LONG overdue to be planted and the ones I put in a tray to "chit" early were overgrown and started to dry out a bit.  That was a mix of white and fingerlings, so while I did plant them, I won't mind if some didn't come up.

 Thankfully the second batch was more stable and included purple and red potatoes that I wanted to plant for my hubby to eat in salads. I don't care much for red variety but he loves it. As you can see, not much was planted for each type.

Also planted but forgot to take picture was my Yukon Golds - only a handful went into a bed in large garden so we can eat early in summer, but the main planting will go to the farm area.
For the peas, I planted these varieties:
Peas - Blauschokker Shelling
Peas - Burpena Early
Peas - Garden Pea Laxton's Progress #9
Peas - Garden Sweet
Peas - Green Arrow Shelling
Peas - Snowbird
Peas - Sugar Ann Snap
Peas - Super Snappy
Peas - Super Sugar Snap Pea
Again, not too many for each, just enough to eat fresh and see which will perform better. The snow peas are for the stir-fry that my hubby loves. Now I just hope they'll make it without groundhog eating them down like last year. I'll do another post on beets and other greens later in a week.

On the seedling front at home, my tomatoes doing great and growing like weeds!  Another few days and I'll be transferring them all to much larger pots and getting them ready for hardening off.

There is also a tray for the community garden - specific choices that my fellow gardeners asked me to plant for them.These were planted about 2 weeks after my first batch so they are smaller, but they're doing really well.

Peppers on the other hand are struggling and only few have woken up and started to grow. I still hope the rest will wake up soon, but I have a back up plan - gave bunch of seeds to have started at the greenhouse in much warmer conditions, so hopefully it will get me enough seedlings for both farm and home. Primary focus will be on sweet peppers for home eating and only few special ones from hot varieties for cooking.

 I had to pluck my lonely lemon out of the lemon plant and put the plant outside as it decided to drop all leaves and has been very sick, so I hope some fresh air and sunshine will jump-start the growing process again. For now I'll be enjoying my tea with lemon :)  And my sweet potato starting to root so hopefully soon will have slips growing.

So, how does everyone else get their garden planted?

Slow Awakening

We finally got few days above freezing and yesterday was even close to 60! So opened all windows to get fresh air and went to look in my garden to see what's happening and if anything survived over winter. It was really nice to spot some pretties waking up - a full month behind their normal schedule, but better late than never. First crocuses started to open up, and daffodils peaked through the ground.

22 foot bed of garlic is patchy but still enough to keep for this year and plenty to store for winter. I might give some of it away. In "bald" places where garlic didn't make it I will plant some broccoli or greens.  And first snow drop opened up which made me very happy.

I did notice that most of the bulbs i planted outside the garden in a new bed that was not protected have vanished, so deer and squirrels had a nice lunch.  Oh well, at least my other bed of flowers inside main garden is starting to wake up and once it goes into bloom I'll take a picture. I'll wait 3 more days and will plant peas and potatoes and some spinach over the weekend.

Spring is missing in action

Well Mother Nature is sure not in a hurry with spring this year around. It was 17 degrees Saturday night, and on Tuesday afternoon we got another snowstorm.

But at home we have plants waking and ready to get some sunshine. My fig plant that was overwintering has started growing and has baby figs starting to form. The overwintered pepper and rosemary also starting to add new growth.

 

And my seedlings are awake and started to stretch toward the lights.

Now if only weather would cooperate..

Garden Plan 2015

Someone asked in email about my current plan for this year, so here's the link:
Main Garden Plan 2015

of course this does not show anything for  small side garden, community garden or the CSA farm planting

SpringFest 2015

Snow is still on the ground, and to add to that frustration we just got alert for another snow storm that suppose to arrive tomorrow afternoon and dump anywhere between 3-6" of snow. Fun. Not.

But on a happier note, I went to the local SpringFest flower show that was all about flowers, designs, gardening and with promise of good things to come in next few weeks. So here are some snapshots of what they had in case of displays, flowers for sale, landscaping, innovative designs like vertical gardening as well as plenty of info and activities for everyone from kids to seniors.

There were also plenty of boutiques and antique decorations, giveaways like various flowers and veggie seeds, wine and jam/jelly tasting and of course lectures.

 

I was there as one of the helpers from Master Gardener group, and was on "seed docent" role - giving away seeds and answering any questions like "do deer eat them" or "will they grow in shade". It was fun actually to see how many people were interested in planting something for first time.