Sunday, April 3, 2011

Spring Awakening


Finally! Some decent spring weather.  The snow has melted (the second snowiest on record in Connecticut this year), and today was the day to get outside and start digging in the dirt.  The four raised bed boxes next to the garage we put in a few years ago, and John "refreshed" them with two tractor-scoops of -ahem- rotted manure we had delivered in the driveway last week.  It was my job today to spread it around to all the boxes. 

 Peter's scarecrow that got 2nd place at the Durham Fair last September kept watch all winter and served as a snow gauge.  At one point his head was buried. 

I'm coooold!
These boxes on the other side of the driveway get lots of sun and usually the tomatoes go here, hence the cages. Finding sunny spots on our property that aren't in the middle of the yard has been surprisingly difficult. But it's a little chilly to plant tomatoes today, so we'll return to this spot later.



So while doing the grocery shopping today I picked up a lovely package of snow peas.  Mmmm.  However, they were something like $5 for 1/2 pound and had come all the way from Guatemala.  Ack!  I can wait for snow peas, so I picked up this package of seeds in the floral department.  The package says I have to wait 68 days.  Early June maybe?  (Like my new gloves?  John ran over my old ones last fall with the mower on the tractor.  Oops.)


In they went, down the line, with a piece of cattle fencing propped against the garage wall for them to climb up.
And look at this!  The garlic I planted last fall survived, doing its thing under all that snow.  I've never planted garlic before, so this is an experiment.  So far, so good.

The last box is the herb box.  Chives, tarragon and oregano are coming up.  There's room for some other things, maybe dill, parsley and what else? The small kitchen garden is my area.  I enjoy having it close to the house so I can run out and pick some veggies for dinner.

John, on the other hand, has had bigger plans.  And of course it involves power tools and a tractor.  And burning stuff.  Last year he cleared some trees on the top of our hill and made the garden behind him here.  We planted pumpkins and gourds last year, which worked well because the vines could spread all over, didn't need irrigation or much attention, and in the fall we had a great harvest:
But despite taking down several trees, the remaining ones made it a little shady.  So over the past few weekends he took down some more trees and made more garden:
Last year's garden has the rows going straight back.  This year's garden addition has rows perpendicular and behind the stakes back there.  I think he doubled the size of last year's. The dirt pile on the right is the remainder of the cow manure pile that was in the driveway last week.  He only put the "good dirt" in the rows where we'll plant stuff, not between the rows where we'll walk.  I've seen a few ideas of what he's going to plant here, and he's bought some seeds, but I'm not sure of the master plan.  There are some raspberries planted in a row left of center, and on the far left I planted about 25 feet of potatoes last week.  Too early?  I hope not.

I was all set to plant the 5 pounds of Red Norland seed potatoes in one of the big garden's 50 foot rows, until I read the directions and realized that they should be cut up into smaller pieces and let the cut pieces dry a few days.  So, planting will be another day.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Looks like a great project! Our garden is on a much smaller scale! I'm glad you are getting some spring up there finally.