Looking Like a Garden

Things are coming up, looking promising and resembling a real garden. Some early veggies like the usually easy radishes didn't do well on account of perhaps starting to sprout and then not getting enough water. It was all my fault for being insensitive to what was going on underground.

At any rate, the BSS are thriving. That's what my family always calls Black-Seeded Simpson lettuces.

They are a seasonal treat in wilted lettuce salad, with fresh onions. Like morels, some years they aren't available. They are gorgeous.

The potatoes have been hilled and mulched. The broccoli are getting tiny heads. The chives are in bloom. It hurts their feelings if I don't let them blossom, and they are cheery.

The Early Round Dutch Cabbages are heading up, but the Bravos from Harris want to get bigger and it will take them quite a while to get there. The other two are savoys, with their crinkly leaves. Notice how I gave them plenty of room. They also got a feeding of fish fertilizer not long ago. We had good rains last week but I'll give them some cistern water soon. Growing cabbages from seed never fails to amaze me. All that growth from only one seed; it's a miracle.

At last, I got a good-sized chunk of rhubarb root to propagate. I have high hopes it will provide me with many pies next year. It's put on two new leaves since I planted it in compost in the top tier.

The late frost danger will soon be over and I can get the tomato and pepper plants in the ground. Today. I'll get the Long Season Beets planted, a bit late but I was waiting on the seed to arrive, then I had to wait while the ground dried out a bit.

Most of the compost boards have been put up. I have put enough weeds and chicken poop in here to fill it several times, but the nature of compost is it keeps squashing down, making room for more. Even a two-fisted weeder like me can't fill it up.

Gardening is the best entertainment ever, and promotes deep sleep when the sun finally sets.

The Early Garden Struggles into Being

The strong winds have been a little rough on the early garden. I've even had to water four times. The hoops did warm the soil and I got the onions, Melody Spinach, Easter Egg Radishes and 4-Seasons lettuces planted.  Little Sweetie snow peas (Stokes) are ready to grow up the sticks. A few days ago, I found a spot for the Swiss Chard, soon to appear.

This bed has more leafy greens-to-be, onions and some larkspur at the far end. Against the fence is the Cottage Corner bed. Every few years some of the perennial flowers get overtaken by grasses and I dig them up and plant some other perennials. This year, I said farewell to a Shasta Daisy and one Missouri Primrose.

The blue bucket has a cracked bottom, so rainwater drains right out. This corner area was used for trash burning by the former owners. I dug out the rusted burn barrel bottom, but every time I work the soil, old rusty nails surface, along with odd things like watches. I toss all the junk in the blue bucket.

The broccoli and cabbages aren't making great growth. It could be the desiccating high winds or the eighty degree days followed by freezing nights.  They will come through. I put  buckets over them the other night when the temperature got down to twenty-three degrees. They can take a bit of a chill, but nothing akin to midwinter. I could cover them with the hoops but they don't like heat.

It's amazing that more people don't garden. It's so relaxing.

Spring Diverted to Greenland

Supposedly, our warmer spring days were stuck up in Greenland in March and we were left out in the cold. There was even a snow after the chickens took up residence here.

The delay did cause a bit of a problem in my indoor planting schedule.  The broccoli and cabbage plants couldn't exit the stage and hogged the lights meant for later flats of bottom heat plants. They couldn't even be left out on the porches overnight. They don't mind a little frost but consider temps in the twenties the opposite of de trop.  I could hear their little leaves chattering so loudly I had to let them back inside.

At last, though, some pleasant days have arrived and I was able to put in the early garden. Nothing makes me happier than getting some seeds in the ground. Local temps always lurch from cold to hot, as if the thermostat were old and unreliable. Not only that, but they can plummet below freezing after being in the nineties. "Just kidding!" said Mother Nature one year as I looked at the frost-killed blackened tomato plants that I raised from seeds. I no longer trust her until after May 10.

This junky creation is the storm doors grow tunnel. It is meant to encourage the weedy growth underneath. Next, I will make the chicken cage and let Betty and Rupert scratch out all the plants and fertilize the ground. It once was a strawberry patch, but the invasive weeds have taken over. They are not just grasses, but lots of things with long taproots, like chicory, dandelions and dock, along with red clover and fescue. Last year, I dug up part of the row. It became loam after I dug, discarded the roots, added cow manure, tilled it a few times then let it sit over the winter.  A few days ago, the soil was workable and I added granulated gypsum to break down more of the clay and ran Tillie once more.  I planted that little spot to a raised bed of carrots and potatoes.

The over-wintered parsnips were better than I thought they'd be, with all that drought.  True, they are not prize-winners, but they aren't the scrawny specimens I feared my shovel would unearth.

Unfortunately, I twisted my knee when stepping into one of those deep cow tracks on a slope out back. Yes, I know I should have filled them in, and I did, afterwards.  That called for rest, something I do not do very well at all, especially in springtime. I did get my leg up after I finished planting peas, radishes, kohlrabi, spinach, onions, chard and the mostly hardened off broccoli, cabbage and lettuce plants. Not that I'm a stubborn gardener, but I did finish up using the rake for a crutch. A big rain is headed this way tonight.

To the right are the fall-planted garlic plants. I hope I do not find any babies in this cabbage patch.

Tiny Blue Flowers

Even before I hear the welcome sounds of the little frogs peeping down at the pond, I look for the first flowers of spring. Those little guys are so small, a person has to bend over and scan the ground to notice them. They must get an early start on the growing season to get ahead of the grasses, which grow any day the temperature rises above freezing.

A low-growing plant, they are up and blooming in February, before the first robin shows up. I cannot find them in my book of Missouri wildflowers. They are big news in my gardening family. We just say or email TINY BLUE FLOWERS!

Last fall, I planted a cover crop of beans in one of the garden plots. It was an experiment that worked out well. All summer, the spot was under a tarp to kill the grass. After tilling in lots of organic material, I broadcast a package of dried Great Northern beans, then tucked them in with the nice soil. The beans grew, covering the soil and shading out weeds. They obligingly died back with the heavy frost. The roots apparently held the soil all winter.

So this spring, all that was growing on that little plot were the tiny blue flowers. I took their picture, appreciated their beauty and then tilled them under. It made me feel ungrateful, but even little plants can keep the soil from drying out for planting.

Other garden chores can be done at any time, but the soil is finicky about when it can be touched. Too wet and it later turns hard like cement. Too dry and it has already baked like a brick.

Some years, the spring rains keep coming and there is never a time for the cool season vegetables to get planted.

There is always a big rush to get in the early garden. One day, the soil is workable. The next day, or even later in the same day, a big rain is on the way. Often, those dark clouds are visible in the wings, sending impatient flickers of lightning and grumbling to hold center stage.

So, in the morning I murdered the tiny blue flowers. Then I flung myself headlong into weeding grasses in the flower bed, while a warm spring breeze dried out the garden soil.

The sunshine, the chorus of peepers, the birds singing and the loose dirt made me feel I was in Heaven.

All day I kept weeding, then I ran Tillie in the garden again and picked out the dying bodies of the tiny blue flowers, RIP. I consoled myself with the knowledge that there were about fifty million more of them on the place.

It was exciting for me to plant some snow peas. In the three previous springs since I moved here, the clay soil was too slow to dry out enough to plant them. Then came the hot weather and it was too late.

Now, there was also enough room, barely, to squeeze in a wide row of spinach, kohlrabi, turnips, carrots, lettuce and three kinds of radishes.

Gathering up all my tools, I was finished, in many senses, by sundown. The sky was clear and I wondered about that ninety percent chance of rain the weather radio was talking about. That forecast had driven me like a mule all day.

In the night, I heard the gentle rain on the roof. Contented, I rolled over in bed. Or I tried to roll over. It seemed that every muscle in my body was sore.