State of the garden: March 19, 2013
A couple of folks have
asked me how the garden's doing, so I thought I'd give you a quick
rundown. We're still eating Brussels sprouts and kale, and could
have still been eating last fall's lettuce, but I ripped it out since
the spring lettuce is nearly ready to eat and I needed the old
lettuce's space. The Egyptian onions are starting to put out lots
of new leaves, so I'm adding green onions into nearly every dish, and
the chickens are coming back up to speed on their egg-laying.
In the freezer, we've
still got enough vegetable soup to last another couple of months.
We're just about out of sweet potatoes (except the ones I'm saving to make
slips for this
year), but have plenty of carrots, white potatoes, butternut squash,
and garlic left. We're getting low on meat, but still have a few
homegrown chickens waiting to be thawed and turned into dinner.
Meanwhile,
the spring garden is not edible, but is growing. The earliest
planting of peas (which I pre-sprouted instead of just soaking)
came up less spottily than usual, despite cold weather, and I've put in
a second planting, which will come up more evenly but will produce a
bit later. As I mentioned above, we'll be eating spring lettuce
in a week or two, and I've recently planted (but not yet seen) more
lettuce, arugula, tokyo bekana, cabbage and broccoli (under quick
hoops), and Swiss chard.
My inside-started onion
seedlings are big enough to transplant, but this week turned colder
than expected, so I think I'm going to keep putting them on the porch
for the day and bringing them in for the night, along with the flat of
early broccoli and cabbage. I just started a flat of early
tomatoes and peppers as well, although I raise the main set of
transplants under quick hoops (starting those a month from now).
The perennials are what
will spring to life first, but beyond the Egyptian onions and a bit of
sprouting from the rhubarb, I haven't seen much activity there yet
either. The fruit tree buds have barely begun to swell in what's
still a slow, cold spring. We haven't quite run out of firewood
yet, though, so I guess I can wait on the turn of the weather.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Is your Tindora still alive? Im curious to see how it grows for you.
T, They're looking good! The recent warm spell helped them take off. (They're inside, but it gets chilly inside during the winter, and I think that was holding them back.)
I may need to repot them soon since I'd stuck them all in the same pot at first. I'll definitely post when they bloom and/or fruit. Thanks again for the swap!