April continued March's unpleasant weather for the first two weeks, but we did seem to have as much rain as we did snow, so there wasn't much accumulation. This last week has been gorgeous, the weather improving greatly and the sun seems to be shining most of the time these days. I'll take it. After the long winter I feel very much like those asparagus sprouts poking their way through the soil, like I've had the longest sleep ever and it's time to get going and get it done. The snow is mostly gone in the front yard, the large in-ground garden is two-thirds clear and the two strawberry beds by the in-ground garden are both clear, as well as one asparagus bed and the rhubarb. All good things to be clear of snow, as they should all be starting to grow very soon. Asparagus is one of the first things to pop up every year, but we had asparagus beetles last year so I need to get out there and clean up the dead fronds from last year as they'll house this year's eggs.
I found these nifty mini-greenhouses at Canadian Tire. They aren't terribly high-quality, but for $50 a pop, they'll do the trick in a heartbeat. I bought three and I'm excited to have a place to start hardening off plants earlier. I've used them for a couple days now and they get nice and warm inside, getting up to 34°C yesterday in the afternoon.
The greenhouse has four shelves, each shelf will hold two standard sized trays, as well as two or three 5" pots. I'm not sure how they would fare in high winds though, so I weighted the bottom shelf down to secure everything well. The last thing I want is all my alliums and brassicas flying off the deck into a giant pile of wreckage.
Other exciting news I forgot to mention in my last blog post, my logo was completed in January and I have my business cards done and ready to go. I was very specific with direction, but the designer also had a really good vision of where I wanted to go with it. I absolutely love how it turned out.
It's now the end of April and the snow is almost gone. Over half of the raised beds are uncovered and ready to be planted as soon as they dry up. Everything is still very wet and there is a good 4-6" of standing water in some areas of the yard.
May 7 and the weather is finally looking up. I have a few beds cleaned out, but the weather just hasn't allowed for much work and the yard is still very muddy. That said, the forecast looks better for the next week or so, hopefully things will dry up quickly with a few sunny days.
Today I'm headed out to dig up some Jerusalem artichokes for someone in the garden club that was looking for some to plant. I should have lots, so thought I'd harvest a few for her and a few to eat since we have yet to try them. The bed needs to be cleaned of last year's stalks and some compost tossed on top, so harvesting a few while I'm at it shouldn't take much time.
May 8
Every muscle I own is on fire today and I feel almost as exhausted as I did when I went to bed. I ended up getting a good bit done yesterday. I took advantage of the visitor stopping by for the Jerusalem artichokes and cleaned that bed while I was harvesting. I half filled a paper bag of smaller ones for her to plant and another of larger ones for us to cook as we still have yet to try them. After that bed was cleaned and topped off with compost, I proceeded to clean two more beds.
My big find for the day was in last year's garlic bed. As I was pulling out the weeds and getting that bed prepped, I noticed a few clumps of shoots sticking out. I pried them up and was surprised to see a little bulb on the end of them like an onion. Still not cluing in, I smelled one. Ah-ha! It was garlic, baby garlic to be precise. I must have missed a few scapes when I trimmed them last year and they went to seed. That's what I call a happy accident. I was planning on purposely letting a few go to seed this year so I could try green garlic, and now I don't even have to wait a year! Green garlic is supposed to be somewhat like green onions, but garlicky. Milder than garlic though and more tender than garlic scapes. I probably pulled up 30 of them and tucked them into the empty spaces of the herb bed. We should be able to harvest some in 30-40 days.
Week of May 14
Working away slowly, I don't know why I find it so hard to get in the groove some years. Everything will get going and be fine, but it seems every year I feel so far behind and this year it's causing me to panic a bit. Trying to concentrate on a small handful of tasks at once, then moving on to another handful. Looking at the big picture very often at this point, doesn't prove helpful.
I purchased a couple more blueberry plants over the weekend, one Patriot and one Bluecrop. I'm going to add those to the food forest once my trees arrive from Greenbarn Nursery. I cleaned one of the 20" deep beds of horsetail. It took hours, but the sweet potatoes are going in that bed and I wanted to get it prepped well so it wasn't filled with horsetail. In most beds I just snip them off as they poke through the soil, but I've accepted the fact that sometimes I'll need to clean the beds completely.
The garden centers are opening now; I'm hoping to get some marigolds and petunias soon. I planted a few marigolds from seed, but until I have a greenhouse, I'll always have to buy extras. I didn't plant any petunias from seed this year as I totally forgot them when making my seed orders. I went to one nursery on Monday, but they didn't have much yet, so I decided to wait until next week to hit them all up. As much as I try to grow all I can from seed, there is always something forgotten or something that died during the process of growing/hardening off. Hardening off is the toughest stage for me. I'm far too impatient and tend to fry things because of that. I'm taking extra care this year to set timers, take my time and allow lots of time to harden things off before they can be planted. All that said, I think I did fry my cabbages, so I'll need to buy some of those as well and possibly some ground cherries. My ground cherry seedlings just didn't seem to do well this year at all.
My seed potatoes arrived on Tuesday. 22kg in total, 5kg each of Shepody, Roko, Sieglinde, and Kennebec. I also bought a sample 4-pack variety of fingerlings which included Linzer Delikatess, Pink Fir Apple, Banana and French Fingerling. I planted one bed of Roko on Tuesday, it took only about 1/2 the bag, so it would appear I ordered too much. When I told Erin, thinking I would sell the extra, she said "Well you're getting a tiller." So, I guess that means I'm putting in a small potato field as well. Will make for a good harvest at least.
Today is Thursday and I headed over to Canadian Tire as they had a big sale and plants were supposed to be 10% off. I got there nice and early and picked up a variety of petunias to plant for my mother like I do every year, some marigolds for the garden and a blueberry and shrub cherry as well. Once home, I potted up the petunias in some nice, rectangular planters that Erin got me for my birthday and set them on each side of the walkway to the deck. I put what was left in another container and watered them all well.
Next up I cleaned what was a bed of kale last year and planted the Kennebec potatoes. I used about 3/4 of the bag this time, so I'll plant the rest once I till up a spot for all the leftovers.
Another bed of carrots planted and I cleaned a bed of horsetail. I let one bed go last year that got out of control and that couldn't have been a more enormous mistake. The plant established itself to the point that last month it put up hundreds of spore shoots. Since I wasn't aware of what they looked like yet, I didn't know what I was looking for. I sure do now after seeing that bed. I had to carefully cut and remove them all, many had already opened and released their spores, so I'm sure that will be a nightmare down the road.
Finally got the winter squashes and melons seeded, just the summer squashes and cucumbers left. They'll probably go in the ground a couple weeks late, so good that they'll be started earlier instead of just direct seeding them like I usually do.
May 22
We were finally able to get into the woods to pick up the logs for the shiitake mushrooms over this past long weekend. Today I started getting them inoculated. The logs were cut back at the end March, before the trees had budded. Then they were left for a few weeks to let any natural anti-fungal agents in the tree dissipate. Once back home, we cut them into 3' sections and the ends are waxed. This will keep the moisture in the log, which is necessary for the mushrooms to grow.
Tools required for the project included a stiff brush for cleaning moss and lichen off the logs, an angle grinder that is fitted with a special bit attachment, plunger tool for packing spawn into holes, a paintbrush for coating ends and covering holes with wax and a rice cooker to keep the wax warm while in use.
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| Shiitake sawdust spawn |
Holes are drilled every 5-6" in a diamond pattern, all around the log. The plunger tool is then used to pack some spawn into the tube of the tool and then to fill the holes. Once the holes are all packed with sawdust spawn, the wax is painted over each hole to keep the spawn in place, as well as to protect it.
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| Inoculating the logs |
I don't really have a great shady spot in my yard ready yet, so I put down a bit of carpenter's paper and set the logs in a log-cabin style stack on the side of the house that gets very little sun and also very close to the water hookup. I'll have to make several stacks, but this seems to be the best place for them for now.
May 25
Another couple beds weeded and planted over the last couple days. The weather is still not cooperating. A couple days ago I looked out the window to see this:
Then yesterday it was beautiful out. Temps are still dropping to close to freezing at night and the temperature fluctuations are making hardening off very challenging this year.
May 29
Feels like I'm getting more behind than ahead. Yesterday was finally the first really nice day we've had. I took advantage and got the shallot bed prepped, added some soil as it was getting low and planted half of it before dark. So far, that makes two carrot beds, two potato beds and a beet bed planted. Seems like there should be more done than that, but I've been so busy cleaning up from last year that not much else has gotten done. I'm sure things will move more quickly now that some nicer weather is here.
Spent the morning planting the shallots and leeks. I didn't plant quite enough shallots, so the leeks mostly fit in that bed as well. I threw a package of extra leeks that I got on closeout the previous year into a 5" pot, so I have lots of leeks this year. Probably not the best thing to have extra of, as they don't store well like shallots, garlic or onions, but they can be left in the ground through frosts and harvested late, and I can always chop them up and freeze for making vegetable broth, if nothing else. They won't go to waste!
My fruit trees that came last week really need to go in, so my next task was mowing the lawn so I could get started. I didn't want to be back there in calf-high grass with all the bugs. I also need to move two blueberry bushes and plant a haskap that's lived in a large pot for going on three years now. While I was back in the orchard I took a few pictures of the blossoms. Pear, cherry and plum trees are all flowering.
May 30
It was an absolutely beautiful day today, so I was happy to get out in it. I've been dreading digging holes for the trees but had to break down and start today. I planted two Taylor pecan trees in the far back, by the heartnut trees as the nut trees will be quite large. Digging was slow and painful as the ground in the far back orchard is solid clay. I crumbled up what soil I could from digging the hole, threw the larger pieces of clay into the woods, and added some bagged worm compost and mycorrhizae when I backfilled. The black flies were very bad, despite a nice wind, so I decided two trees was enough to plant today.
Next, I sorted the peppers on the deck and pulled out all the Lipstick variety and cleaned the half bed those are going in. The other half is currently filled with garlic and a lovage plant. I added 15 Lipstick peppers to the bed, planting each with a tablespoon each of bone meal and Epsom salts, as well as a teaspoon of mycorrhizae.
At dusk I unloaded some firewood so I can pick up the Husquvarna 17" tiller I bought to break ground on new beds.
May 31
I woke up with a very sore back from all the clay digging yesterday. Hopefully it will work itself out once I get at it today. It's supposed to be very hot this afternoon (29°C / 84°F). We went to Canadian Tire first thing this morning to pick up the new tiller and grab a few things. I spent an hour organizing the peppers by variety as they were all mixed in the trays. I cleaned, raked and leveled the bed and planted Golden California Wonder, Coral Bell and Golden Marconi, all sweet pepper varieties. It took me a good 2 hours to plant the bed, though I did come inside to cool off a couple times.
During a cool-off break, I read the tiller manual cover to cover. I'm excited to try it this weekend, hopefully.
At dusk I started planting the cabbage/cauliflower bed. My cabbage seedlings didn't do very well this year, so I went to Mr. Tomato and grabbed a couple 4-packs of early cabbages, as well as a couple of rhubarb plants that will go in the rhubarb bed.
That wraps up the spring season, not the best we've had...very possibly the worst. Just have to keep plugging away. Looking forward to a sunnier, warmer June and July!
