Morning and greetings from west Michigan. Rainy here. Had a great family come out this past Monday to help with some outside things as I have been temporarily out of duty. They did some necessary fruit tree pruning and clemantis clipping, raking, and many other smaller outside tasks that I just can’t get to right now. Social distancing has not been a problem. Amazing times we are in. Thanks Diana for keeping the threads going. Having a great garden this year seems all the more important.
Started my tomatoes and peppers inside.
Would like to sow lettuce, spinach in the garden. I have so many seeds, I'll risk any bad weather.
Got life in every pot that is outside. Chives are in full swing and making it into one meal a day. The thyme, regular and lemon are coming in nicely and I used some last night for the first time this season. Tarragon is looking good and so is the sage. The mint has small leaves and the lavender is getting green. Waiting for the oregano to get life. I had flat parsley for most of the winter. It looks like that last cold spell killed it. I have borage going in that pot and probably need a replant of parsley.
Due to social distancing, I am hosting several plants from the office. My dining room looks amazing. When they go back, I may need to find more plants for my dining room.
We all have time to garden...
Greetings from southern New Hampshire where winter returned and left in the span of three days! We got at least 6” of heavy, wet snow on Monday night. It started to melt on Tuesday, and there are just a few piles left.
I raked the planter out by the road, yesterday. A few iris shoots shoowing. I need to do some serious planning and planting, there.
It appears that our remaining bee colony collapsed. Not to saddened as they were the most aggressive bees I have ever had.
I am getting ready to assemble three swarm traps and about one hundred frames. Then, I will build the first of I hope several insulated horizontal hives.
I cleared the old muck and foliage from the bog filter. I also repositioned the east side of the duck pen and moved the electric fence to match it, while rerouting the electric fence to bypass the bog filter.
I finished pruning pines and took the branches to the transfer station. it looks alot neater.
As soon as the piles of snow that were shed from the house roof melt, I will clean out the two planters.
I am really ready for spring!
Quarantine is great for gardeners! We purchased 9 additional acres west of our place last year and are waiting to close on 3 more acres to the south. I’ve put in 10 peach trees in the last two days in addition to regular gardening. Got a pecan tree, 3 more peaches and 3 apricots left to put out. It’s raining this morning so freeping, having tea and loving this weather.
My gardening day is not a fun one. Digging a 10 inch dia stump out of the middle of my spot for a high tunnel. Roots are 3-6 inches in dia and criss cross. Giving up on the axe and will put the old chain on the saw and hack away, sharpen chain, hack some more - repeat as needed. Then finally hook some logging chain to it and yank with the truck.
Very encouraging reading all your post this morning after a depressing week here on Humboldt bay. No Saturday get together with old FRiends this morning so Lady Bender and I are going for a ride.
We’re thawed out, but getting rain & snow mix once or twice a week, keeping things too muddy to work the soil.
Thanks to the Wu-Flu, I have at least 1 extra hour/day to get out & do stuff; if business doesn’t pick up, we may get a further cut in hours. In any case, I plan to be out there more this year, so should have a more successful garden.
I have early, mid, and late season seed potatoes; I plan on planting about 25 of each, a much more manageable amount.
As soon as it is dry enough, Green Arrow peas will go in. By then, I should know if the onions & garlic that were not worth harvesting last Fall overwintered, or need replanting.
In addition to our saved long season half-runner butterbeans, I’ll be putting in both bush green beans, and Yard Long pole beans; Also on hand are half-long carrots, Muncher cucumbers, spinach, midseason bicolor corn, and saved squash seed. New for me this year is seed tape for beets; I’ve grown beets several times, but always have trouble keeping the seeds properly spaced.
All that, plus the asparagus & rhubarb should be plenty for us, while still remaining manageable; not having the chickens & rabbits any more will help, too.
For people who don’t normally follow Prepper threads I keep a Knowledge Base for SHTF situations. Although a lot of the material may be on topics that you aren’t really interested in there is quite a bit of information people who subscribe to threads like this would find useful and it’s all organized by directories so if you aren’t interested in how to make improvised weapons or survive in the wilderness you will still find hundreds of titles on gardening, homesteading, country living in urban areas, foraging, DIY and frugal living tips among other topics. All you need is a pdf reader, an Ebook reader, both of which can be found online for free and most of you probably already have, and a program like WinRaR to uncompress files if you choose to download an entire directory at once. Send me a PM and I will give you an access code to the site. It’s totally free. All I ask is that you don’t discuss the contents of the KB in this forum.
The forsythia in my backyard is showing signs of life. -Tom
Got my seeds started finally between yesterday and today. I have moderate success starting them indoors, have used a cold frame in the past but can’t do that anymore. I have a large heating pad under the trays that I’ll turn on tonight. Did that once many many years ago and had great results.
Some questions about garlic.
I did not plant any last fall because of the move. I ordered some for this fall, but now am beginning to wonder if they will come in, the economy being what it is.
I found some older bulbs of the variety I like that are just beginning to sprout, so I want to plant them now.
I understand that they will not develop the cloves like the fall planted ones, but I would like to plant them anyways, just to save them.
My thought was that I would dig them up and then plant them a few months later in the fall as usual.
Does anyone have any experience doing this?
