[greeneyes]

Greetings gardeners. Not much doing this week. Lots of rain - so not much could be done outside. Inside I have a lemon tree starting to bloom.

Also, the tomato stalks I cut last year and stuck in dirt have grown quite a bit, and several have flowers. I will be transplanting those as soon as I think the frost won't be a problem.(experimenting how to get earlier tomatoes than usual).

Since they have grown in length, I plan to pull off many of the leaves, and just keep the leaves and flowers and bury all the rest of the stem.

Garlic is looking fine with just a bit of brown from frigid winter temps. Spinach and winter lettuce planted last fall are growing and need to be picked and something else planted.

One of the raised beds has been entirely taken over by a wild mint, so that's number 1 project. Number two project is to plant taters left over from last year, and then buy some Yukon Gold for this year additional tater planting.

Strawberries are perking up - hoping to get a crop this year. So busy with other things right now barely have time to do anything with garden or housework, so garden stuff takes a back seat for a while, as the housework is in the middle seat.

I can't believe that March has already come and practically gone. Have a great weekend.

Prayers up for all. God Bless.

[Fai Mao]

Our mango tree is baring. we have 150 pounds of mangos waiting to go into the dehydrator

[Benno van Archimboldi]

How do I get on this list?

I have 3 acres in NW Virginia, and gardening is VERY important to me?

Thanks

[Ammo Republic 15]

It’s still too wet here. I need a few weeks with no rain so I can hook my tiller up to the tractor.

I did get some tomatos planted the other day in one of my raised beds. The strawberries are looking nice (also in a raised bed). The garlic just comes up naturally every year.

I’m ready to get the corn, lima beans and southern pink eye peas planted in the regular garden. I’ll probably plant some okra too this year.

I’ll get the eggplant, onions, bell pepper and zucchinni planted next week in the raised beds.

The Leghorns are laying as always and the bream and bass should be biting in my pond, just need to find the time to go.

[greeneyes]

Pinging the list.

[MtnClimber]

Still snowing here in the Colorado Rockies. The forecast is that we may get up to 16 inches tonight. I need to get early starts going indoors. I always seem to wait too late.

[goodnesswins]

Been so wet, so cool that peas are struggling...got greens regrowing from last season, tho. Peonies are up 6 inches and camelia is finally starting to bloom. This has been a winter/spring like in the 50s...lots of rain, clouds all the time...depressing. Need sun!

[Qiviut]

I managed to get 1 of 4 raised beds weeded this past week. It was full of wild onions (from the soil I put in it last year) so that was really “fun”. I have one more bed with the wild onion problem, but not as bad as the one I just did.

Found a new canning recipe which should take care of my jalapeno pepper overflow that has happened the last two years. It’s for a Sweet Jalapeno Pickle Relish. Here’s the link:
http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/2522/Sweet-Jalapeno-Pickle-Relish118275.shtml

My laptop crashed Monday & wasn’t worth repairing so I had to get another one. So far, so good - still getting everything back (I did have backups) & have been working on it since late this morning. It’s been raining all day (over an inch) so it was a good day to stay inside and mess with this sort of thing. Mower is back from the shop so I’ll be mowing fields all weekend - weather is supposed to be gorgeous.

[txhurl]

I have so much bleeping gardening news... spent a small mint to keep me outside and my mind semi-off the news lately.

[MightyMama]

I’m trying out those laundry-basket strawberry planters you see all over YouTube, plus putting down landscape cloth to see if my Brilliant Idea for ground cherry harvest will work. (Ground cherries fall off when they’re ripe. I am thinking if I plant them on a steep slope with slick mulch, they will slide right down to where they’re easy to gather, but I have yet to be able to test this. :) And next Saturday (ish) the tomato seedlings get transplanted, which is always a cause for rejoicing at my house.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

*BUMP*

...for Saturday Morning Coffee! Busy tonight. ;)

[Redleg Duke]

Greetings from southern New Hampshire where we have more than three inches of snow, so far today. We may have as much as 12” due by the end of tomorrow.

[Arkansas Tider]

It’s been a busy week here in North Alabama, I managed to plant 700 tomatoes and 600 squash plants. One good thing about planting on plastic mulch is the weather doesn’t matter once the plastic is laid the bad thing is walking in mud all day and busting your butt several times hurts these old bones. My first market of the year is Cullman county tomorrow morning, I have a truck bed full of one gallon buckets full of strawberries to sell. I will try and post a few pics latter in the week.

[Neoliberalnot]

Before the excess rain commenced, I managed to get small gardens started at 3 locations on my rural properties. I put in 2 Stark Bros apple trees in both Wright Co amd Pike Co Missouri. I also planted anywhere from 50-100 onion sets in Wright, Pike, and Callaway Co Missouri, and a few broccoli plants in same locations. That’s it for now. The rain now has made everywhere a mudpit.

[tubebender]

Beautiful sunshine the past two days but temps were a bit nippy with a brisk north wind. I installed the drip lines on the 100 strawberry plants and had enough rice hulls to mulch 2/3 rds of them so I’ll buy some more at the feed store tomorrow. I counted 20 volunteer potatoes coming up in this years corn patch which is fine as the corn won’t go in until the end of May. Lady Bender started many of her annual flower seeds in the “greenhouse” this afternoon after weeding a permanent flower bed. I’m going to get a bid to build 10’ X 12’ permanent greenhouse using windows and shower doors for glass (I have a friend in the glass business)

[correctthought]

Nice to see your strawberries waking up.

My Flavor Grenade, Flavor King pluots are putting on a great show flowering as is the Santa Rosa plum.

Rest of the fruit trees perking up, except the sleepy head persimmon.

Thinking of planting pawpaws or edible bamboo.

Need to build a bed for the blueberries.

Is it too much to ask that the locals have their dogs not pee on my rose bushes?

Also, does anyone know where I can buy a Zanthoxylum Simulans Plant thats in stock?

Both US sources that I could find are out of stock.

[painter]

Here in Missouri the wife and I are starting to cut Asparagus!

[Rebelbase]

Had the garden turned last fall and finally got a gully washer of 2+ inches this week that broke up and melted the clay clods.

[Rebelbase]

Anyone here ever try blue or red potatoes? Not the skin but the flesh color.

[Ellendra]

It's hard to think about gardening right now. I lost my favorite "assistant" this week:



Snuggles found me out deer hunting back in 2005. I heard this yowling echo through the whole valley, and thought one of the barn cats had gotten caught in a coyote trap! Instead it was this little ball of fur, someone had abandoned her out there. She was screaming for me to wait up, while she ran to me and jumped in my arms.

I've never met a cat as friendly as she was. She would beg to be picked up and cuddled. When company came over, she was right there to greet them. And when they left, she'd wander through the house trying to figure out where they went.

One time, I was dozing on the couch while dad was doing some electrical work in the basement. (This was when I was having dizzy spells and could barely walk.) He'd warned us that the fire alarm might go off, but only because he was testing it. When the alarm sounded, I just put a pillow over my ears and ignored it. But Snuggles, oh no. She raced in circles around the room, saw I wasn't getting up, then jumped on the sofa and started pawing at my face! You could hear it in her meow, she was saying "Get up! Get up! Something's wrong! Get up!"

I patted her on the head, and she actually shrugged, decided that if I wasn't worried then neither was she, and curled up on the pillow next to me. All with the alarm still going off!

A little over a year ago she was diagnosed with cancer. This week she lost that fight.

The sweetest kitty in the world is gone.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

We added two more raised beds for nine, total; I'm pretty much ready to go as soon as the weather starts to cooperate! :)

Please note my BEAUTIFULLY thinned Lilac Hedge in the background. They hadn't been pruned in close to 30 years; I took out a zillion suckers! They now have air and light, so should bloom well in a few weeks; they're budded out.