Spring has sprung!

It's been unseasonably warm here of late. We're still getting the odd rain shower or two, but we've been enjoying the sure signs of spring: fogless, sunny days. If the pattern holds, we'll get the summer fogs soon and I'll be wishing these sunny days back. So I've been taking advantage of it as much as possible. This week, especially, I've decided it's time to kick it into high gear and get as much done garden-wise as I possibly can. The results have been very gratifying.

Last week (or was it two weeks ago now?) I planted the first row of our vegetable garden (from left to right): sugar snap peas, walla walla sweet onions, garlic, red onion, shallot, green lettuce, purple lettuce, green beans, san marzano tomato (like a roma), mini bok choy, sun gold cherry tomato, more garlic, another sun gold cherry tomato, swiss chard, and snow peas. Phew! This was a big task, but it looks swell and I'm very excited to see things taking root and leafing out! But there's so much more to do...

The garden has begun!

I felled the kale trees this week. The four kale plants were almost as tall as I am, and had thick, woody roots balls. Their trunks were a couple inches in diameter at the base! Wow! I harvested the last of the leaves (those that weren't covered in silver aphids, anyhow), and made my first batch of dehydrator kale chips. They turned out very good - though a bit on the salty side (oops). Nice to know that I've got something else I can make when my kale grows up like crazy this year.

Kale Chips!

There was a pet project that I'd been mulling over in my brain for months: removing the herbs from the vegetable garden and scalping a little 4x5 section between the back porch and the unused propane tank base. Well yesterday, I finally did it. I scalped the grass and weeds, cut back and dug out stray blackberries (a big problem around here), mixed in some soil and amendment, and put down a few pavers for easy access to the spigot as well as the herbs. This morning, having let the soil rest overnight, I planted the many herb starts I'd collected recently (Crescent City mint, lemon thyme, sweet marjoram, sweet basil, chives, parsley) and dug up and transplanted the herbs that had been residing in the veggie garden (oregano, sage, rosemary, and thyme). It looks so swell! Not to mention that it will make for more room to grow veggies and easier access to herbs, while also giving me a little more room to plant a greater variety of herbs! I've got some seeds for green onion, dill, and fenugreek that I hope to start and plant in my new spice garden.

Herb garden!

On a side note, I've got TONS of thyme (that giant bush in the bottom right above), which I plan to cut back and dry en masse this week so that I can have it on hand and probably give it to interested friends, too.

The other big project today was creating a raised bed in one section of the garden. I cleared a spot for it a couple days ago, and today Jack helped me pick out the necessary supplies to make it happen. We brought them home and I put the frame together, Jack helped me get it level in the ground, and I filled it with some of the compost from our pile, grass clippings from the lawn, two bags of organic soil (a large percentage of which is wood chips and makes me reminisce about playing on the playground and digging in the wood chips in elementary school), and a half a wheelbarrow full of dirt gathered from the various gopher piles left around the yard - waste not, want not! I'll be letting that sit a day or two and then planting it with root vegetables. I've got seeds for beets, rutabagas, carrots, and purple-topped turnips. Hopefully planting them in the raised bed will make this year's harvest to include more long and skinny carrots than short and fat like they were last year. ;)

Raised Bed - Ready for Root Veggies!

What else? Tons of weeding to be done, and then I've got to get the rest of the garden tilled and planted. With what? Not quite sure yet... more lettuces, I'm thinking. There's some potatoes that eyed out and need to get planted before they start to mouldering. Hopefully some squashes - maybe even a golden-fleshed watermelon! I got a lot of neat, unique seeds from a friend of mine, so I've got lots of options. I definitely need to pick up a new red cabbage start - that did so fantastic last year! Plus, I'm entertaining the possibility of planting corn. I've got seeds, just have to decide if I've got the space or not to make it viable. Well, I've got plenty of indoor tasks that I want to get done today, so I'd better get back to work. It's a bit on the warm side today (a whopping 70*), so I decided to stay indoors for a couple hours and then I can go back outside when it starts to cool off again to work on the weeding.