Karen's Garden Delights Journal
2nd week of April 2011

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The long awaited sunshine and warm weather is finally here and the grass seemed to turn green instantly while daffodils exploded into bloom everywhere. Over the weekend the temperature jumped to the 80s and we wanted to spend every moment we could outdoors. Here is what the kids did during some of that lovely weather, wove daffodil crowns while the chickens happily scratched for bugs. The garden is still quite wet and early in the week we could only work in the areas that needed worked up by hand. I did manage to get some June wedding flowers, a row of sugar snap peas and more spinach planted during a dry spell. Six early tomatoes (Stupice, Sungold and New Girl) went into Water Walls with several of the plants already blooming. These little "greenhouses" keep things nice and toasty inside and get the plants off to an early start. Most years we are eating our first tomatoes the end of June. Salad from the fall plantings is really growing well and I made 8 salad bags this week, what a blessing to have abundant spinach and lettuce this early in the season! We also ate our first meals of dandelion and stinging nettle greens, the true spring tonics.

Later in the week it was dry enough to disk the main garden and our family had a planting marathon one evening. Peas and onions went in the ground along with lettuce, broccoli and cabbage transplants. We moved some of the low tunnel hoops and row cover to the broccoli and cabbage bed to give them a warmer start. The next day was quite windy and rainy so I'm sure the tender seedlings benefited from that protection. The fresh soil felt so wonderful to work in and I love going barefoot on the soft earth. The ground in our main garden has benefited from many years of leaves and mulch and is very crumbly and mellow. Good soil is definitely a valuable resource.

Almost immediately after the garden was disked, the children were all staking out their personal garden space for the year. Each one gets an appropriately sized space to plant whatever they like and take care of it on their own. Even the two year old will get a 3’x3’ area to plant a tomato, sunflower and beets. Some of the plants they choose are their favorites for snacking on, like Buttercrunch lettuce, carrots and cherry tomatoes and some areas they plant veggies that they can “sell” to me to use in veggie baskets. The younger ones also like to save some space for playing with tractors and trucks. It's nice when our work space can also be our play space and I hope the children will have more memories of garden fun than of being a slave pulling weeds in mama's garden.