Window of Opportunity Has Closed

I'm glad I got done what I could this last weekend. We are now back into the normal wet weather mode. It will be interesting to see if any of my planting actually sprouts.

Chicken Wire Because it is Chicken Wire

As I was prepping my two beds for planting some really early spring stuff, I had to keep shooing the chickens away because they just absolutely loved scratching in the newly turned soil. So I had to put them back in the coop to finish my planting. And then today, for the first time in my life, I bought chicken wire because I needed to use it for its name: "chicken" wire. I got some two foot wide stuff from Home Depot and encircled my two new beds so that we can let our chickens out of the coop and still get some crops to grow.

What I planted yesterday actually was not the first planting for this year's garden. Back in November on Thanksgiving morning, I planted a number of cloves of garlic. We now have around 20 garlic sprouts up which should be ready for harvest some time in August or September. We are really looking forward to adding our own garlic to our home-made, mostly home-grown pesto and marinara.

It was gray, rainy and cool today and I was tired. So no yard work beyond setting up the temporary chicken wire fencing and moving the coop to a new spot.

Planting in February?

Yup. I went to Portland Nursery and got some Seeds of Change seeds. I was sobered by the store-supplied chart showing what veggies should be planted when. No pole beans yet! But, with a little bit of a gamble, I planted some buttercrunch and red oak lettuce, some round black spanish radishes (radishes will grow in rocks so these at least should work) and some cascadia bush snap peas.

While attempting to sow seeds, I had the chickens out loose from their coop and they were absolutely obsessing on my freshly turned soil to the point of preventing me form being able to plant. I have now learned why they call it chicken wire and why I need to purchase some tomorrow.

I finished the Big Spring Prune of the roses and thought I would restart my never-ending battle with my bamboo. But, the muscle ache in my left forearm reminded me that I am 42 years old and need to dole these efforts out in doses, hopefully building up to more steady work as we approach April and May.

I'll finish this post with a view from our back steps out over the yard take early last last July. It's fun to compare it with my photo from yesterday showing where I turned earth. Oh, and the my two cats are cute too.

Early Season Gardening

I got up this morning and after a breakfast of oatmeal and coffee I got out my metal file and my good garden spade. I re-sharpened the edge nice and sharply. And then it was time to turn earth. I turned two smallish sections of the garden in preparation of planting some early season crops of peas, pole beans and various greens. About two-thirds of the first section was expanding last year's garden into the lawn, so that meant some back breaking sod cutting work and then turning. I finished both sections just before noon in time for the sections to receive some good afternoon drying sunshine.



I'm somewhat sore from my first of many days to come of shovel work. By the end of April I should finally have those muscles used to the work. If it looks like it will stay dry long enough tomorrow I am thinking about spreading some organic fertilizer, turning it one more time and...wait for it...
planting!! I may be jumping the gun but I'm willing to give it a try with these relatively cold weather plants.

I used the rest of the day to do the Big Spring Prune on my roses. I got through all but my big fountain roses near the driveway. I'll probably finish those off tomorrow. I usually do the Big Spring Prune around President's Day or when the Portland Parks have pruned the roses in Ladd's Addition. I noticed two weekends ago that the roses had been pruned over there.

I'll finish off with a picture of an egg from Rosie still in the nesting box of the coop. Tomorrow we have to move the coop. This time of year they are stripping the soil under the coop and it takes longer for plants/grass to bounce back. I'm going to start rotating the coop around various future garden areas to get those areas well fertilized.



All in all, it was a good, sunny, productive day.

Tomorow I Dig

I decided to take the window of opportunity that the weather has given us and I'm taking the day off from work to begin prepping beds for the early season stuff like peas, beans and greens. I'll maybe even do battle with one of my arch-nemesi (plural of nemesis since I have more than one), the bamboo. I'll definitely have to sharpen garden spade for the start the season.

In the mean time here are a couple of pictures from last fall's harvest. In the first one, I am contemplating blanching just over 65 pounds of tomatoes we harvested one morning in mid-September.



And this was from one of our harvests late into October. Like I wrote previously, the garden went in late, but it grew late and bountifully as well.

Trying it again (blogging that is)

Another gardening season is rapidly approaching. My attempt at blogging about it last year obviously failed miserably. Due to weather, schedule, having to dig out by hand a new garden plot from the lawn, my own inactions, etc., the garden didn't really get put in until quite late last year. I ended up busting my hand-me-down, decades-old rototiller and resorted to hand digging out the various garden plots. Though the garden got in later than I anticipated and not quite as large as I originally wanted, we still ended up with quite a bountiful harvest. I think my favorite harvest story was from mid-September when we harvested just over 65 pounds of tomatoes and then spent three days milling them, making marinara sauce and then freezing the sauce in single-meal-sized plastic tubs. We still have 5 or 6 tubs of marinara and one ice cube tray full of pesto left in our freezer.

Things that worked: tomatoes, hot peppers, potatoes, basil, pumpkins, one head of cabbage, lettuce, mustard greens, bush beans, popcorn, lots of sunflowers and many other flowers.

Things that didn't work: beets, the rest of the cabbage, carrots, some winter squashes and pretty much all that I tried to start from seed indoors.

My problem with the seeds starting indoors (including the cabbage) was mainly not having the garden plots ready until it was way too late for those seeds. I think I just got a bad batch of carrot seeds and beet seeds. With those I made the mistake of not using Seeds of Change seeds. The winter squash baffled me. All three hills sprouted and then just quit growing. I think it may have to do with the quality (or lack thereof) of the soil in that back corner. I'm going to go back to growing potatoes in that plot this year and try the squash in a different part of the yard.

April & I perused the Seeds of Change catalog a few weeks ago and decided on a pretty ambitious garden this year. I should be able to get stuff into the ground much earlier this year, at least in the plots that I used last year because I prepped most of them with a mixed cover crop. I will expand the area of garden plots too this year. Less lawn, more food and flowers.

This year we are expanding to include sweet peppers, pole beans, tall sweet corn instead of popcorn, winter squash (hopefully it will work this time), way more potatoes and dry soup beans.

If the weather is anywhere close to okay this weekend, I'm planning to start turning some of those plots in anticipation of getting peas, beans and greens into the ground within a couple of weeks. Oh, and from the picture in previous you can see that we acquired some chickens in the last year. I have them in a movable coop and expect that their "fertilizing" of the yard will help the garden on top of the benefit that we are already getting an egg a day from each of the three of them.

Let's Try This Again (a test post)