Getting Behind

In posting not in doing the work. Since my last update on Thursday I've done a lot of things. I finished turning the other compost pile over (about a cubic yard). My townhousemates, husband, and I weeded the whole yard and spread 2cuyds of mulch.

The herb circle had its bricks redone so the newly planted sage would have some space. Also in the last year I layered some new plants off of the rosemary. I just pulled some branches down in spring and covered them with soil and a rock to keep it from coming out. This spring those branches had roots on them. I moved them to other spots in the garden. This way if one dies another might live. This year all the ones by the foundation died. Maybe next year it will be somewhere else. Even hardy rosemary is barely hardy here.

I planted up all my zinnias and cosmos. I have two beds they go into. One is my rock wall garden which is where the road enters our property. Technically the rock wall garden is not "our" land. It belongs to the private road which dead ends at our house. Since it is a private road I am required to keep up the land as the abutter of the land. Which means I use it to grow fruit mostly, but I do add in flowers. The other spot is a small spot along my garden fence near the driveway. I mixed the cosmos and zinnia together. Two zinnias for every cosmos planted. You might also notice the basil in that flat. I planted them too. It is a bit early for basil, but it has been so nice recently. Hopefully they will survive. That was the last of my seedlings I had grown. I'm thinking of direct seeding anything else I need. But I may change my mind on that.

I noticed my kale was starting to bloom. I picked all the blooms off for a spring treat. But I also chopped down all the Blue Curly Kale. I left the bottom parts of the stem which will hopefully try to grow out again.

I froze most of it. Yup I just get finished eating my frozen greens from last year and I start packing them in again. Most of my kale that I freeze comes from my kale in the spring and not in the fall. I'd love to have at least 30 packets frozen. Each packet is about 1/4lb of kale or one serving. I do have some more kale out there that I didn't chop down. I'll probably process that variety once the chopped down stubs start to show some green on them. I still want to be able to eat a lot of fresh kale this spring. If I'm lucky I'll get a lot more greens. If I'm not the plants will just try to send out scraggly flowers.

I decided that I would move the asparagus bed. I'm going to kill the plants in the existing bed. There are only 3 out of 22 still growing so it won't be hard. I don't know if it is a virus or water issues or something else. I'm going to put the new asparagus plants that I ordered where I had planted my blueberries. I moved the blueberries to one section of the rock wall garden where the asparagus had been.

I still have a lot of linear feet along the fence as the old asparagus plot was rather long. Caroline, one of my townhouse mates, requested it be a green wall. So I'm going to espallier some fruit trees. There are three 8' sections to fill so I did some research and picked out three trees. The pear is a Honeysweet which is self pollinating which is required as I'm only planting one. There are other pear trees in the neighborhood, but they really aren't that close. Then I picked out two apples. I wanted easy care ones for this section as they will be along the fence and won't get as much airflow as ones I have planted in the yard. I wanted a Macintosh for applesauce so got a Macfree. The other is a Liberty. I tried a Liberty at the farmer's market last year as I was thinking about one. Both are Macintosh type apples. Both are resistant to scab, cedar apple rust, mildew, and fire blight. Hopefully they will do well here.

Getting Ready For Warmer Weather

I ordered a pile of mulch and thought I had gotten out of doing any of it. But it turns out that I ordered a bit too much. We were only going to mulch the front landscape beds, but with the extra I mulched the asparagus and the back raspberry bed. We have two more small beds in the back that I've told my townhouse mates to mulch. Basically I'm in charge of all the landscaping, but I'm allowed to boss everyone around and tell them what to do. For a lot of things it is just easier to do myself since I mostly know what needs doing, but certain chores I farm out to the rest of the crew.

But I guess it is good that my asparagus is mulched just in case the weather is dry. I wasn't going to. I was going to let it go this year and just keep it weeded. Next year I'm thinking of over seeding it with white clover provided all the plants make it. If not I'll do one more round of asparagus planting to fill in any gaps and wait one more year.

The weather is destined to warm up eventually. Yesterday we had a nice taste of it. We got to 71F(21C) and it was a glorious day. Today we are back into wet and cooler weather. But the trend really seems to be for a nice slow warm up. Which means it is time to starting thinking about the warm weather crops. I already have the first of the corn planted. But corn can handle some cool weather. Beans, which are the next to be planted, won't germinate until the soil hits 60F(15C). Yesterday with the sun the soil hit 70F, but with the rain coming in I'm thinking it will still stay mostly around 60F. But that is high enough. So I got the first of the trellises made. On the next dry day (maybe Thursday afternoon or Friday), I'll make the second. Then I can get them seeded. My radishes are a bit in the way. I planted them at the end of the bean bed. But the French Breakfast can mostly all be picked. It is just a little that I seeded with white icicle. It hasn't gotten big roots yet. Maybe I'll just over seed that small areas with the beans and pick the radishes when they get ready. The beans will take a while to germinate anyway.

Beating the Heat

The predictions are that today will hit 80F along with the next couple of days. Monday for us is a state holiday. Patriot's Day. It is the day that the Boston Marathon is run. I feel really sorry for them. The predictions are 88F. In April. I still can't wrap my head around the weather we have had. I need to plant my lettuce, but decided that it wold be best to wait until Wednesday when it cools down a tad. Today I'll bring the plants inside out of the sun. I don't want to be in that weather either. So I decided to get most of my chores done yesterday.

The first chore was to plant some seed. I prepped the rest of the pea bed before planting. It is also the bed for the random plants, mostly greens and annual herbs. Though they aren't getting planted yet, I did plant a 3' double row of beets. Then behind my chamomile I planted some zinnia seed. And behind the cilantro I planted some sunflowers.

Cilantro trimmed off before removing the roots

The main cilantro bed had to be prepped first. The main part of that was taking out a ton of cilantro. I was leaving just a strip to go to seed. The area behind that I wanted to be sunflowers and some new cilantro. I planted the sunflowers, but I figured there was still enough cilantro seed in that bed that just turning over the soil would make it sprout. I hope so. I'll keep all of these places that I seeded well watered over the next few days.

Then it was time to plant the asparagus. It showed up in the mail late Friday. I like to plant live things from the mail as quickly as possible. The package had 11 plants. I tried to pick the best nine of them. Last year I planted 22 plants but six of them died and three of them were females. So these are the replacements. I'm just crossing my fingers that there are no females, but I'm guessing there is at least one in there. And some may die again too. So I may have to go through this again next year.

I have a short list of chores that need to get done. Thin and transplant the baby Asian greens bed, plant the lettuce, plant the cosmos, divide and plant the dianthus along the path, find a place for the extra thymes and plant, get some kind of support up for the raspberries. But those will all wait until after the heat wave is over. During I'll just make sure things are well watered.

No Rest for the Weary

I figured Monday would be a great day to take a break from physical work. I had a lot of errands and calls to make. I would mostly stay out of the garden except for a little watering. As I watered, I noticed one of my spinach plants had come up. Whoohoo! On Tuesday many more had popped up, but still it wasn't enough to see if they would totally fill out, but now at least I know that I will have some. With spinach that isn't always a given. Then I noticed little pea shoots starting to come up. Just a tiny top of many of them, but in a few days - especially with the all day soaking rain we are getting today - they will all be up. Again Whoohoo!

My day went right as planned. Until 4:00 came around. The UPS truck pulled in front of the house. I prayed it would be for my townhouse mates. And it was. Then the FedEx truck pulled up 15 mins later. Again I prayed, but this time my prayers weren't answered. I had a box on my doorstep. Usually I LOVE boxes on my doorstep. But dang it I wanted a day off.

The box was from Pinetree. It had 30 strawberries, 22 asparagus, and 5 raspberries. Sadly my husband was off on a business trip or I would have begged him to help. I thought for a minute, but figured if I didn't get them into the ground right away it would probably be the next night or Thursday. Sadly I had to go into the store to work on Tuesday or they would have just waited over night.

Strawberries planted

I power dug all those nice plants in. First came the raspberries in the back yard between the foundation, two bulkheads and the walkway. My last raspberry patch would try to take over everything it was near, but this time they are contained.

Then the strawberries were planted in the rock wall garden where the figs and plum tree will go. Earlyglow (8) is between the gates, Sparkle (8) is next down on the rock wall. And the photo above is of the last bit which is Seascape (10) which is an everbearer. I've grown Sparkle in the past and it is an amazing tasting strawberry. I hope the others are just as good.

The last bit to do was the asparagus. The bed is about 33' long. And I needed a trench 8" deep.

The first issue were the over wintered spinach plants. I harvested all the leaves from the plants in the middle of the bed, but the ones that were off to the side I left. I'm hoping they survive getting their roots cut. I would hate to lose my only early spring producer, but the asparagus is worth it if necessary.

Asparagus planted

Then I planted them all in the trench and covered them with about 2" or so of soil. I took this last photo at just after 7pm. So I was out digging again for 2hours and 45 minutes and about as fast as I could while the light lasted. I was so tired after that.

That night I had trouble sleeping. Over a week ago I injured my bicep somehow digging. It doesn't hurt all the time. But occasionally it sends out sharp pangs of pain. This doesn't make sleeping very easy. A low steady pain is easy to sleep through, but sharp stabs that I'm not expecting wake me up. I ice and heat it every night to keep it from doing so, but Monday's chores were just too much for it. I figured at least on Tuesday I could rest. I had to work the store (an artist's coop), but that involves sitting in a chair for hours, so that wasn't an issue. I even took the bus in and back so I wouldn't have to walk that day.

Then at 5pm. The damn FedEx truck rolled in again. Sob. I swear I used to love the UPS and FedEx guys. Now I curse them. It was my order from Miller's. I had six cranberries (Thunderlake) and two peach trees (Red Haven and Reliance) . I put the peach trees in a pail of water to soak their roots. My husband was there early that day. He had a conference call he was taking at home at 6pm. So he went out and dug two large holes for me. After dinner I went out and planted them. I'm ignoring the cranberries right now they came in small pots so are safe for a while. Luckily the soil was prepared a couple of weeks ago. Peat moss was already dug in. But I figured I didn't have to go out in the fading light. Another day is just as good.

I have three more mail order deliveries to come. I have one rose that is by itself, so easy enough. I have the order for two apples and one plum. Then I have the order for three gooseberries from Nourse Farms that I know will show up today. They were the only ones that emailed me the tracking number. They won't go in today though. It is pouring rain. I'll have to let the soil dry out a bit before they can go in. Thank God for rainy days. Maybe tomorrow. Who knows. But today I have off. I swear. When the gooseberries tell me to put them in as soon as they arrive, I can tell them I'm waiting for their own good.