Snow in April?

We got some overnight snow last night and it continued on into the morning. This photo and video show our backyard and major veggie garden (we call it the sun-garden). In the snow you can really see the raised beds and garden paths. It isn't ridiculously cold this morning and it is neat to see the flowers standing tall with snow on their petals.

Another meal of kale, and asparagus last night. We are harvesting something just about every other day now. The asparagus is wonderful. We have swallowed approx 25 spears so far. About half of them are big fatties and the other half are a little skinny. I was reading about aspargus last night, and it sounds like I should keep my asparagus harvest to a little more than a month (a least on the skinny ones) to give them another year to thicken up. I was super, super aggressive with the spacing of my aspargus bed. I was unwilling to sacrifice the 4-5ft between rows that the books recommend, so I planted them tight - probably 12-18 inches diameter between root plantings. Because of that bold move, I intend to make sure that these roots are always first on the list for a thick layer of compost. I read an interesting strategy for extending the asparagus harvest season into the fall. This book says you should harvest 1/2 your bed in the spring, and let the other 1/2 grow into ferns without harvesting it. Then in September you snip all the ferns off of the unharvested section. The book said this section will regrow, allowing a fall harvest. It is said to be a super sweet harvest with the cold night air giving it the sweetness. I don't think I have a large enough bed to try this, but maybe after we tear out the driveway we will expand our bed.

Hot butt and dump

No this is not a compost recipe. This is a kids game that we played today while we gardened. We loaded up the hot and steamy compost into the wheelbarrow and then sat the kids on top of it (Hot Butt). "All hands and feet inside the ride please". Once the wheelbarrow, compost and kids reached the destination, they all got dumped! Hence the title for this post "Hot butt and dump!" Now don't you wish you were five again.

We did a ton in the yard today. I was outside from 7:30 till about 5 pm. Most of our effort was spent creating a brand new garden bed. This will be a partial sun to full shade bed that runs in front of the weeping wall (ask me later). It is about 20 ft long and about 6 feet wide at its widest point, but it serpentines. Sarah wanted to make this bed to help soften the wall and give us a little privacy from our neighbor. Yesterday we planted a cherry and a rose in this section - today was all about soil turning and prep. I turned all the sod. Sarah and Quinn chopped it and broke up the dirt clods. Then I mixed in about 7 wheelbarrows of compost.

I can't say enough about our compost operation at this point. Today was 4/4, and we were using compost that we basically started on 3/7. It was so hot as I peeled it off the pile that you had to pull your hand away after about 3 seconds of touching it. It is a deep brown and smells absolutely wonderful. This new section of garden really made a dent in our compost - our "black gold pile" is down around two feet high - from almost 5 feet a couple weeks ago. The good news is that I added just about as much or more material to the "green bin". I did a really nice job of layering these additions as we worked today. I would add a layer of sod (upside down), spread some lime and greensand on top of that, and then add about 4 inches or so of sticks and leaves. I repeated this several times.

Veggie work today was limited, but I did do some minor stuff. I planted approx 20 onion seedlings that I had started from seed. I put these in the chimney garden.

I also did a sun study today - a chart telling me when and where the sun is hitting all our various plots. Do you know we have over 15 mini plots? Isn't that amazing? Our property is just wonderful. I did a couple of these sun studies last year, but we have added so many plots that I wanted an update. Our current parking pad is of course our sunniest spot - and as each day goes by, we are closer to getting out the sledgehammer and converting this to yard.

I harvested one large kale, 9 small spinach, and snipped about 10 onion tops. I made a really nice egg dish with all this good stuff and homemade bread. It was delicious. Of course Carter could barely sit at the same table with us - He HATES EGGS!

Crossed over

You know you've crossed over to a strange place when you add the following to your compost...

1. Hair from your cat and your friends
   
2. Food that you didn't finish taken home from a restaurant (wrapped up in a napkin)
3. Friend's fireplace ashes
4. Cardboard boxes
5. Jimmy Johns cups
   

Spinach day

I did an early morning spinach planting today. My initial garden plan had two sun garden rows devoted to the cabbage family. I am not completely tossing that plan, but I think I can get away with planting my brussel sprouts and fall cabbage planting later in the summer. According to my PA garden guide provided by my coworker Becky (who took the master gardener class), I can plant brussel sprouts in June for a fall harvest. Spinach is harvested in June. So I am going to try to stagger these plantings. My plan is to start the brussel sprouts inside in late May, early June. Toward the end of June I hope to harvest all the spinach I planted today and replace these plots with my brussel sprout seedlings. I planted the spinach this morning in great quantity. I'm thinking of this planting as a freezer crop, rather than a succession planting. Spinach freezes wonderfully and is a great add in to just about any eggy, soupy, noodely, saucy recipe you can cook. So to that end, I planted about 20 - 3 foot rows of spinach about 6 inches apart in 1 1/2 of my sun garden raised beds. I'm guessing I did about 400 seeds. I also sprinkled in about 4 rows of green onions. Prior to planting I added bone meal and green sand to the soil and worked it with the digging fork and rake, pulling out any lumpy unfinished compost in the process. The soil looks nice - a little lumpy, but really rich and loamy.

I also did some planting in the beet and carrot row in the sun garden. The carrots that I planted earlier in March have not yet sprouted. That is not a good sign. It has been almost a month. In order to continue to give the earlier planting a chance, but add new seeds - I sprinkled a new layer of seeds on top and covered them with 1/4 of screened soil. Then I worked and planted a new section of beets and carrots. I dug the dirt out to about 12 inches deep, loosened the bottom and built the soil back up by screening compost and dirt. I planted cylindra beets. These beets are long and thinner - look more like a carrot than your traditional round beet. I have never tried these before.

Oh yeah - I almost forgot - My pepper seeds are finally starting to sprout. This is the batch that I planted inside on 3/11. It is a mix of Serano (hots) and California Wonder (Bells). Both are sprouting. 6 have sprouted out of a planting of 24. That is great news. I was afraid that I would need to buy pepper seedlings, and I really wanted some more of those serano's for hot peppers and hot sauce.

In the afternoon we went to Chapons and bought two Cherry trees. One is called a Black Tartarian Cherry and the other is called a North Star Cherry. The Tartarian is sweet and the North Star is tart. They are both miniatures - maxing out at about 15 feet height and spread. We got two trees so they could polinate each other. We planted the Tartarian in it's permanent home in the back yard to the south of the stone patio. This spot was chosen to help give us a little privacy from our neighbor and because it has a little sun. We aren't 100 certain where the North Star cherry is going to permanently find a home, so we planted it in a temporary spot behind the shed. It is right off of our parking spot. In both holes I mixed a bunch of compost and watered well. They are about 6 feet tall at planting.

Where the tartarian was planted, we began cutting out yard to make another large perenial garden in front of the weeping wall. We transplanted a small rose that we had in one of our vegetable patches. We already have a currant that is climbing up a section of the wall. Sarah is planning out this planting, and I not 100% sure what she has planned. We'll soon find out.

I filled up the remaining squares of sq. foot garden #2. I planted 2 brocolli, 1 sq of onions. I also dropped 4 other brocoli sprouts into the traditional cold frame. Busy day- Sylvan canoe club for dinner - spring has certainly sprung.

Shallots coming up

I saw the shallots poking through last night. We also harvested more beet leaves, spinach, rosemary, carrot tops, and asparagus for dinner this evening. I am basically out of salad supplies. Only about 6 tiny little spinach seedlings are left. Lettuce is all gone. The "2nd round" of lettuce and spinach is still too small to pillage. I have some sprouts to tide me over and could probably make one more salad out of these 6 spinach seedlings. The asparagus is also coming in pretty well now. I counted over 20 of them this morning.

This year will definately go down as a successfull "test year" for spring season extension. But in order for next year to be a success, I will need much more quantity. I think a good thick fall cold frame planting of spinach, kale, swiss chard, beets etc will be the key. I also plan to improve my cold frame lids (possibly making a double layer of protection), and planting seeds in January. The fall planting of stuff will be my round #1 harvest and the January seeds should be round #2.

Carrots are not doing well in the garden at all so far. I think I planted those teeny, tiny seeds too deep because I was afraid of the cold. I need to start another batch this weekend. The 10 inch pot with carrots is doing quite well. I thinned them yesterday and had some carrot tops on my sandwich for dinner. The carrot roots were still very small, but were running nice and deep and were starting to turn orange.

I woke up at 5:30 - all excited to do some spinach and green onion planting. Yuck - steady, soaking rain. No gardening at all this morning, but at least the rain barrels are all full. Any chance I will need all that rain water? Doesn't seem like it right now in spring - but July and August? I bet we will need it. I pulled another barrel out of the river a couple of days ago and need to get it cleaned out and fixed up with a spigot. It was pretty dirty on the inside. I think I am going to go crazy with detergent and tri-sodium phosphate to get the gunk out. I will let water cycle through it for a couple times before I use this barrel for the garden.

Salads and Pizza

4th salad of the year tonight - Asparagus, spinach, and beet leaf pizza! Harvest season is in full swing.

Besides the bountiful harvest, I just did a few garden odds and ends tonight as the sun set over the river. I filled in some empty squares with lettuce seedlings and seeds, planted about 20 seed savers variety lettuce seeds in the chimney garden, and moved some garlic around.

Still no sign of pepper seeds sprouting, and I'm a little disappointed with the lack of carrots to date as well. Only the carrots started indoors in the pots have sprouted - "as soon as soil can be worked" - yeah right. Anyway - seeds are cheap. I'll try some more this weekend.

Seed fill in

I dropped a couple seeds in the sq foot garden cold frame tonight. The peas that I planted on the first day of March were very spotty. I planted probably 100 of them in 8 sq foot garden sections. Only about 20 sprouted. So tonight I filled in the blank spots. I did the same with spinach and green onions.

Planning note: I want to do a big spinach planting this weekend. Spinach does very well in the freezer and is typically spent by the end of June. I think at this point I have plenty of broccoli and cabbage in various places for the spring planting. I decided this morning to plant the remainder of the two raised beds that I have planned for the cabbage family in spinach. I will also sow some spinach in with the potatoes and in the chimney garden. This will probably give me somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 spinach plants. That should give us a plentiful late June harvest for freezing. As we harvest this huge planting, we can follow it up with a summer planting of corn, brussel sprouts, cabbage, and broccoli (all started indoors, and potentially kale, endive, swiss chard, etc. I like this plan.

One other possible change - given the huge pea plantings I have done so far, I may be able to plant one of the raised beds that I had planned for peas in something else (thinking non-roma tomatoes). I need to check and see how a row of tomatoes would work for my rotation plan.