This week has blessed us with exceptionally beautiful weather for mid-April, breaking temperature records across the province and putting spring fever into over drive. We have taken full advantage of the summer-like days and have been outside everyday working away like busy little bees.
Dan started things off by pulling out the rototiller from the garden shed and doing our first break up of the soil in the vegetable garden. Before the snow fell last year, we had added in more peat moss to one end to try and bulk it up as we found it to be soggy last year for most of the season. I must say, it is looking fantastic this year! Throughout the winter we also added ash onto the snow on top of the garden from our wood fireplace in the house. The ash helps to add minerals into the ground as the snow melts. First till in, and we are on track!
After we broke soil in the vegetable garden we used the rototiller to create two new areas over by our fruit trees where we plan to plant all of our sunflowers this year. After the giants we grew last year, we had decided to move our sunflowers out of the vegetable garden so they weren’t taking away from anything. They now have a 3 foot wide stretch of garden that spans across our yard in front of the fruit trees. We have several varieties to try this year and I am excited to see if we can break our height record from last summer!
Fruit tree prep also got underway as we weeded the bottom of each of the 24 varieties of plum, apple, cherry and pears we have growing. We filled up the back of Randy with water using a tarp and have been watering them every couple of days. Fingers crossed, we have rain in the forecast this weekend and we can get the fertilizer out.
Next we moved on to the front flower beds that had come up looking like little jungles. Dan rented an edger and we beau-tied up existing beds and added some room to others. I weeded, watered and started planning for what we needed to start filling them up. I have tulips sprouting heads already, peony bushes poking through the soil and hostas that are lush and green already. I am so thankful for the hard work I put into weeding them last year, as this year there was not nearly as many weeds and they pulled out mush easier. Now to find room for the chicken garden accents I have accumulated!
We have set up a mini green house on both our kitchen table and breakfast nook table as well as the table out in Dan’s man room attached to the garage. We picked up a small oil heater, as ours had crapped out over the winter, and are shortly going to start moving things out to our actual greenhouse so we can make room for the up and coming plants. The first to move will be our proliferating garlic, the tomatoes that survive and most likely our purple pepper plants. We have squash, pumpkin, cabbage and broccoli started in the house and cucumber started out in the man room. These will all be living shortly in the man room so that we can make room for the cauliflower, zucchini and watermelon to start in the house. As well I have started Cosmos and Snapdragons for the flower beds. Look at us go with our green thumbs! 🙂
If even half of what we have growing at the moment survives, we are not going to be going hungry this summer/fall!
