Sunday, March 2, 2008

Spring Fever

It's still chilly but we're working up a sweat in the garden.
We chopped the dead pyracantha into bits and hauled two trailers worth out to the green garbage. We're all scratched up and glad that's over.
It's time to plant! So we prepped the soil by raking in bone and blood meals. This isn't really needed since we have chicken and duck manure and loads of compost but we might as well use up all the bags we bought a couple years ago on sale at IFA. Plus it makes us feel kinda witchy cool to be working with blood and bones (of fish). Seeds of Change has some of my favorite heirloom varieties.
We went to Momma Mia's house and she was very glad to give us thornless blackberries, everbearing strawberries, grape vine starts, raspberry canes, and other random flowers transplants. Jason helped plant a box of garlic. Suz added more raspberry canes to our patch.

We made teepees out of the 8 foot tall bamboo. We planted sugar snap peas around the outside of the teepees and mustard greens, mezclun mix, and lettuces on the inside of the teepee so that when the peas grow the heat hating lettuces will have some shade.We planted the grapes next to the roses. The Italians have a saying that roses are the doctors of the grapes.
And now that we've done our part it's up to the seeds and the weather.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your garden looks so beautiful! Thanks for the wonderful day!

Anonymous said...

So so incredibly fun! I wish you could be my personal trainer-- I'll be happy if we can eat a handful of peas this fall. Sounds like you are going to have a delicious summer. Good thing I don't live by you because I'm sure you'd think I was a wisdom and food mooch within about a week.

Anonymous said...

are those hot pink gardening gloves I see?

Anonymous said...

this looks like a serious full time job. but eating your own blackberries and strawberries does sound pretty amazing.

Anonymous said...

susan- it was beyond fabulous to have you there and i look forward to next saturday!!!

b- i'm sure i'd be BEGGING you to take produce off our hands and to hang out, husk corn, and shell peas. i wish wish wish you lived close by!

sue-donym, ha ha. why yes they are hot pink gloves. i knew you'd appreciate them.

pamo, yep, they are yummy. and super invasive. but its not a serious full time job. we're just playing (and crossing our fingers that stuff grows).

thanks for everyone's comments. i love them so much!

Anonymous said...

where did you find seeds of change for so cheap? is that a good earth tag? i'm just wondering because most of me seed catalogs show them running between $2.50 and $3. :(

i love your garden! you're such an inspiration. and thanks for the info that bone and blood meal are from fish. for some reason i thought they were from cows and it made me sad to think about using it. not that fish have any fewer feelings, but...ya know...they're not nearly as cuddly. :)

Anonymous said...

chandelle, good earth seems to always have the seeds on sale. they have a high germination rate so i have no idea why the perpetual sale. to be more cost effective i tried to preserve seeds from last year but didn't dry some of them thoroughly enough before putting them in bags. (moldy). this year we have a book and will do it right!
yeah, those fish are kinda skiddish, not so cuddly.