A Good Day

Today was a really beautiful day and also the perfect temperature. I don’t know what it was, but it was perfect; not too hot, not too cold, and not too windy.

Here’s all the stuff we got done today (well, some of the stuff we got done today):

Cabbages and collards were planted in the bed next to the kale which was planted last week (cabbages on the right).

Most of the remaining seedlings in cups and otherwise were moved into the new greenhouse, which our dad just fitted with some great shelves. Our mother really loves it and also our sister wants another one built so she can live in it 🙂

Looking in

Left window

Flats

Right window

Here are some pictures of a few herbs coming up (oregano, thyme, spearmint). And a 3+” hollowed-out stem of last year’s chard!

Chard Stem

Spearmint

Thyme

Oregano

I found what I think is burdock right in our backyard next to the watermelon bed and baby pokeweed coming up in the next bed. We’re excited to try some burdock stems. We have already eaten pokeweed, but if we run out of greens, we can keep it in mind.

The best find of all were some May apples which I spotted on a drive back home today. After checking up on whose property it was on, I dug up a couple of plants and will put them in the same area as our ostrich fern and woodland poppies. They should do well there as it is shady and moist. The plants don’t fruit in May, as the name might imply, but hopefully we’ll get some mayapples sometime this summer. Even if we don’t get any from these, I can just walk down the road and get them. I’ll update you at that time about how they taste and what I think of them.

Pokeweed

Burdock

Mayapple

Mayapples

Mayapples

From Down the Road….

Garden Update April 2016

Today it was right around 70ºF and we spent the whole day outdoors. Our sister and her boyfriend came over and we went out for Italian food with them and our older brother and his wife and our other older sister. I didn’t bring my camera to the restaurant since I figured I’d probably forget to take pictures anyway 🙂

First up, one of the cattails I planted last fall came up! I’m going to fill a long container with some dirt and place it under one of our drain pipes so that it will always be swampy. I’ll hopefully get a good crop of cattails in the next couple of years.

Strawberries, blueberries, and apples have their blossoms (glad the recent frost did not kill them).

Granny Smith Blossoms

Strawberry Plants

Blueberry Bush

MacIntosh Blossoms

In our “deep backyard”, our Solomon seal, ostrich fern (most likely), Virginia bluebells, and woodland poppies are coming up; I’ll be eating the Solomon Seal next week and possibly the ferns if I can determine what kind they actually are. The Virginia bluebells are like our bleeding heart; in the hot summertime, the plant goes dormant and disappears under the soil.

Solomon Seal

Virginia Bluebells

Ostrich Fern

Woodland Poppy

Woodland Poppy

Last, but not least, we worked on the greenhouse for a couple of hours and it will be completed tomorrow….. finally!

First Greens, 2016

Tonight, we ate our very first greens of the season: lettuce, spinach, and zen hybrid leaves tossed into a very tasty salad (other ingredients were purchased from the store).

As is often the case, I was down to my last mouthful before I remembered to take a picture, but I did remember to take pictures of the greens in the colander before they were made into a salad.

Lettuce from hydroponics

Spinach & Zen Hybrid

Also, we are almost to the point of putting plastic sheeting on our greenhouse. Dink says he wants to sleep in it this summer…. as long as he can get Wi-Fi 🙂 Not sure where it’s going yet, but right now it is on a patch of zoysia grass and it’s pretty darn comfortable!

Is It Spring Yet?

 “The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
a cloud come over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.”
–  Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time, 1926 

Last week, everyone had spring fever. This week, everyone is back inside because for the past few days, it has been very cold and annoyingly windy. Now we will get some lovely rainy days, some cold nights, and some not-very-warm days.

It’s okay, but makes us feel like we’ve gone backwards into winter again. All of our blooming tomatillo plants, tomato plants, lettuces, and new fruit trees are waiting for warmer weather in our garage. We even put a heater in there one night because it dipped into the 20s.

I think they are more content with the weather than we are 🙂

Why Grow Your Own Food?

One of the best reasons to have your own garden, at least for us, is so that we can share our produce with people we know who, for one reason or another, do not have their own gardens. We admit we pretty much hogged our produce for the first several weeks, but today, we have gathered what our garden produced to give to others, and we will continue giving throughout the summer to neighbors, friends, and family (and the Safeway ladies who saved us coffee grinds). After all that, we’ll still have plenty left over for ourselves and more coming in every day!

Kale, Blueberries, Summer Squash, Cukes

Also, Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there – including our own!!