Gardening Gardening

Larry Hall has a lot of good information on growing systems you might find interesting, including containers.

 

Crocus and the guys -

 

The crocus are beautiful!

The guys?...

 

Yeah. They each stopped when they were ahead.

 

Drip lines got pulled yesterday and the ground was in pretty good shape so I hooked up the chisel plow and got some ground ready for the first patch on sweet corn today. I try and shoot for April 1 to start planting corn.

 

I can almost smell that sweet earth from here farmer steve. That looks nice.

In contrast to working the ground, which is frozen solid here, I was just out covering my pile of winter accumulated fish remains with snow to keep it semi-frozen before I can get it covered deep within my compost pile from last year. Then it will be covered again with ample carbon/leaves from my fall hoarding. Doing it this way I can keep 50-100lbs of fish remains from producing any odor before it ends up smelling like rich soil.

I will plant that pile with squash in May sometime, then in late August when the summer squash are done the contents will be a rich dark loam compost for my garlic beds.

 

Most of it smelled good. The patch where the cole crops were smelled like bad sauerkraut.

 

Ezrilla lettuce I started end of Dec . Not doing so bad considering it is starving for light even in a south window.
Also some garlic chives that the Fall frost got to and I brought them in just for grins and they've come back rather well . They're good in egg salad.
I've started some 30 day Tango lettuce but they haven't sprouted yet.

 

Still too wet to plant here. I'm ready to go though. All this mad rush on grocery stores just reaffirmed the fact that growing your own food is the way to go!

 

Keep your fingers crossed billb3 that it doesn't grow out to be 1 ply paper.

 

It was nice to out in the gardens today.


One of my garlic beds showing some life.


One of my young apple trees freshly pruned in keeping with an open center/vase.


Another apple tree a few years older. This is already producing some some nice big honey crisp apples.

A few years ago when the snow was deep enough for rabbits to walk right over the fence, both these trees were severely girded, but have managed to pull through. The top one in particular was completely stripped all the way around so I am curious to see how it continues to develop. The bottom tree was left with only a small patch of continuous bark but it is growing vigorously.

 

Our garlic is up about 6".
Our roma and july tomatoes (seeds) are pushing up through the dirt the last 2 days. Beef steaks must not come up as fast.

 

Garlic is up here for a while too. No rhubarb or hostas though.
Had a tomato on the counter and made some BLT and had half of the tomato left. Put it in a glass bowl and in the fridge and the seeds sprouted. They must have started when on the counter.
Now I have a dozen or so tomato plants probably of some greenhouse variety tomato. They have a GS label for now. Grocery Store.

 

One beef steak popped up over night.

 

Gettin some rain/snow mix here Tim. Keep that little guy warm.