Friday, April 9, 2010

I Love Spring

Nothing is better in the garden than seeing the seedlings come up in the springtime. This year we had a long warm spell that jump started our spring. The trees are already getting their leaves. I could swear this is weeks earlier than usual, but since I don't keep track of when the leaves come out I'm not sure how much earlier. I do know that the daffodils are out at least a week earlier than last year. The hellebore above is just starting to fade. The buds are already on my bleeding heart.

The garlic is coming up like beautifully. Last year I had casualties. This year not one of the cloves died. In fact one is double. I could swear I only planted single cloves.

I don't know if I will get to harvest it or not this year, but I would love to be able to save at least some of the cloves for the new garden.

The peas are coming up well. Some places are spotty, but I think there is enough so I won't have to reseed. I'll check again in a couple more days.

And look at my first attempt at wintersowing. Those lettuce plants look great. Not that I really need more lettuce, but I'll plant them over in a shaded part of the garden so as not to take up even more space. I don't know if I can actually eat all the lettuce I already have planted.

Sadly the weeds have started germinating too. If today hadn't been rainy I would probably be out there weeding the spinach bed. The spring spinach is up and starting to grow. The next nice day I'll take off the cover and weed it and see how the germination went this year.

16 comments:

  1. Everything is looking so good! I never knew what a garlic plant looked like before. How did you grow them? My weeds are thriving too!

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  2. Wow your garlic and lettuce are looking good! Those flower photos are beautiful!

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  3. Sadly, the weeds come along with all this gorgeous growth. Your garlic looks great. Have you ever eaten any of it green? A reader of my blog recently recommended green garlic when I confessed to a desire to rip some of the stuff up and check on it once it started looking so healthy and robust. I've never tried it, but I think I will soon. Just mentioning it because you might not want to lose it all...

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  4. Spring definitely is the best! We had all our nice weather last week though, it was near freezing today and even snowed. Thankfully it didn't stick and should warm up again tomorrow. Spring can be so fickle. Love those hellebore, always wanted one but have yet to get one.

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  5. Nice garlic, mine don't look consistently as healthy. I'm also happy to have a few peas coming up. Given all the soggy weather we had, I thought it would be worse.

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  6. The spring blooms are beautiful and the peas, garlic, and lettuces look very healthy and thriving. Those lettuces will be harvest size in no time!

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  7. The flowers are beautiful, and the garlic looks great!

    I just finished reading an article in the "Pay Dirt" section of the April/May issue of Organic Gardening, talking about mycorrhizal fungi ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza ). The last thing it listed to help increase beneficial fungi in your soil is to weed *less.* I don't understand all of what it's saying, but weeding less to help balance the soil's inner workings? Sold!

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  8. I have never grown a garlic before and your garlic photos enticed me. Will try to grow them too.

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  9. Great pics! We're chock full of weeds too, which is the pits. I just can't keep up with them all. I hate that they are growing up in my SFG too. BAH!

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  10. great post. those garlic look fantastic. I didnt plant mine till March and kinda regret that I didnt get them in earlier.

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  11. So pretty! My wintersowing was less than stellar, I will try clear containers next year, maybe it was the opaque plastic that was against me. Beautiful hellebore photos, :)

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  12. I wonder if your garlic will be large enough before you leave that you can harvest it at the green garlic stage. Very impressive that all of them survived. Mine overwintered at about 90%.

    With all the rain that we've had, this warm spell is the least that mother nature could offer up! Hopefully, summer arrives super early as well.

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  13. Kiwi gomes, well here in the north east US we plant the individual cloves 6" apart in all directions in the fall around the time of the first frost. We mulch heavily (I used 3-4" of compost, some years I've used straw). They overwinter quite well. Sometimes they pop up in the fall before they freeze solid for the winter and sometimes they wait to come up in the spring. I blogged about it last fall:
    http://daphnesdandelions.blogspot.com/2009/10/planting-garlic.html

    Jane, thanks

    Meredith, yes I have had the green garlic. If I don't have garlic left in the spring, I'll pull the bulbs up and eat it fresh. My real concern is getting some of the cloves back so I can plant this coming fall. If I don't harvest it right then I won't have it anymore. I'll have to buy all new stock and one that I love is an unknown variety.

    Dan, my hellebore was a gift from a friend. I hadn't a clue what they were before then. I really do love them since they grow in the shade and provide flowers at a slow time of the year.

    Sally, So far things have gone well here too. I kept thinking the seeds would all wash away, but of course I have a garden that drains well, so no washing away.

    kitsapFG, oh and you should see them now. I can't believe how they grew and changed color over the weekend. I'll have to put up more pics this week. The freckles is particularly beautiful.

    Momma s, I will always weed, but I do try to keep my fungi happy. Lots of compost, not much digging.

    Grow Upside Down Tomatoes, thanks

    Kate, yeah it helps for a short time to have weed seed free soil, but eventually they get in. I've found the more I keep up with them every year the less weeding I have to do in the long run. Well except for the dill. I let it seed freely in the garden and it is such a weed.

    Gardenerx, thanks

    Kelly, I didn't have any opaque plastic so haven't tried it that way. It was actually hard to find containers since we only drink water and tea. But I saved some after my husbands birthday party. I always have to buy soda for that.

    poppyseed, thanks

    Thomas, I think my own saved garlic worked better than the bought garlic cloves. I could pick the perfect cloves that way. Peeling them helps too (along with all the soaking I do) because once they are peeled you can see any bruising and use a different clove.

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  14. I love hellebores, they're beautiful, and your garlic and peas look as though they're doing really well.

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  15. Now THAT is a gorgeous garlic patch!

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