2nd week of April 2010

Greenhouse Seeding Off The gardens are finally all disked and ready for planting. This is a little later than other years because we had to wait longer for things to dry out from all the melted snow. I always love the feel and look of a freshly disked garden. I often work in my bare feet because it feels so soft and mellow. There is a lot of raking to do to even out the beds before planting which makes for sore shoulders at night and rainy days provide a welcome rest. A clean stretch of ground also brings a feeling of great possibilities. There are no weeds (yet!) and it's fun to start mapping things out for each area while everything looks so clean. The kids have staked out their garden plots and are busy adding their early crops. Last week we planted long double rows of peas, an outdoor bed of lettuce seedlings and put the sweet onion plants in plastic. I'm not a huge fan of using plastic in the garden but I always use it on the melon and squash beds and this year I decided to try it with the onions and shallots to reduce weeding. One thing I'm glad for is that all of it is recycled plastic. The large pieces for the squash is from an old silo bag and the pieces for the onions are wrapping from drainage pipes.

Radish and Scallions Working the soil was a bit behind schedule but many things are ahead of schedule with the string of warm temperatures. Spring flowers are blooming early with daffodils already past their prime and lilacs starting to bud. I was supposed to help supply daffodils for a wedding on April 22 but the bride may need to opt for lilacs instead. The peach trees are already blooming and we are hoping there will be no killing frost to damage the fruit. I planted a bed of some cold hardy cut flowers like sunflowers, larkspur, Bells of Ireland and Nigella this week also. Pictured is the greenhouse with many greens already flowering and going to seed. I had plenty of volunteer arugula plants along the path and now they are covered with white edible flowers. I plan to harvest some of the flowers to sell at Local Roots as salad accessories and then start pulling out the overgrown plants to make room for some new plantings. Another crop I sent to Local Roots were bundles of garlic scallions. These grew from missed garlic bulbs and were rescued from last year's garlic bed before it was disked. We are also harvesting the first baby radishes from the greenhouse which are so sweet and delicious (as you can see from the little fingers anxious for a bite!)

I've been trying to meticulously weed the flower and perennial herb beds, especially getting out all the quack grass while it is young and easy to pull. It is sometimes tricky to get all of the runners out and any stray piece has the potential of growing and taking over again. Low calcium is the condition quack grass likes to grow in so we are also adding more gypsum to some of the infested areas. Our blueberry patch was overrun by the nasty quack grass plus the rabbits made the tender shoots into their winter salad bar. So we decided to rescue the remaining plants and move them to the row of berries behind the house garden. Hopefully they will survive the move and we can keep a better eye on them. Next door I'm adding some red and black raspberry plants from a friend. The currant bushes in that row are looking great plus I'm glad to see the rhubarb we planted in the fall coming through.