It’s always a good feeling in the late spring to see the garden come together out of the chaos of leaf mulch into neat rows ready for planting. It’s a powerful feeling, making a garden, like bringing the world into order. We spent a very rainy day over the weekend mulching the garden paths and tilling up new rows, and I can’t wait to get all the seeds in and begin the watching, waiting and watering.
I have to say, my Mountain Man was quite a trooper out there determinately swinging the hoe in the pouring rain while it was all laden down with clumpy, wet soil. Gardening is a love labor, no doubt about it, and not for the faint of heart.
I got the compost pile uncovered and found a treasure trove of dark, rich compost abundant with red wrigglers. We mixed this in with all the new garden rows and started a new pile. Between the chicken manure and straw from coop cleanings, yard clippings, ash from the woodstove and cocoa bean husk from work at Chocolate Alchemy, our compost almost looks good enough to eat! It’s like chocolate cake dessert for the garden.
Our lettuces are starting to look quite delectable, promising salad days to come.
I am eagerly anticipating the little red French Breakfast Radishes beginning to pop up from the soil. I invited a play on words involving radishes from friends and got some real gems like “Radishing Beauties” and “Rad’ish” to name a few. I’m still getting a chuckle out of it.
Of the several pea varieties I planted at different times, some are doing better than others, but I expect to have some succulent green peas to eat very soon.
The onions are looking good and very timely as we are down to the last two storage onions from the cellar.
The potatoes are looking good and I think the fingerling varieties should be ready for harvest before too long. When it comes to feeding a family, potatoes are important.
This is a chard I let overwinter and it re-sprouted from the base, even after all our snow. Fresh chard is one of my very favorite garden vegetables, so this was a nice surprise.
The strawberries in our raised bed and along the herb garden border are flowering and setting some fine looking fruit.
All our pruning must have paid off because all of the fruit trees (except that one cherry – don’t know what it’s deal is) are setting copious amounts of fruit. These Asian pears are already the size of quarters!
And most exciting of all, our blueberry bushes are heavy with fruit and already showing some blue! With our trusty barn cats keeping the chipmunks away, I look forward to coming out and picking handfuls for breakfast this summer when we are out watering the garden!
I love it when hard work pays off in produce.
Your garden is looking wonderful. We have much the same things planted as you but our plants are not as advanced as yours . We had some frost last week that killed the corn and we are experiencing a major slug problem this year – do you have any tips for me? I've been putting down cups of beer but they seem to be eating first then going for a drink!! tried eggshells, ashes and woodchips but they are hungry, determined little blighters!
We've been having unusually warm weather for May, so things are a little farther along than usual. I had slug problems at my last place, and never quite figured out how to deter them. Beer bait and straw mulched paths around the beds seemed to help, but they ate a lot of my plants. I have heard letting chickens or slugs range around the perimeter of a fenced garden helps as well. Good luck!