Spring Garden Prep

Someone's helping Dad get ready for the spring

April yard photos

Daffodils!

Organic lawncare FTW!



Sore

When you live in Wisconsin, the following scenario is pretty typical.

You spend 6+ months cooped up in the house, dealing with snow and cold.  Spring rolls around and you have to start mowing the lawn, which makes for a nice way to get outside, even though you might be wrapped up in a winter jacket yet.

Then the first really nice day comes.  The weather forecast reads sunny and 80s.  You initially put on jeans and a t-shirt, not trusting the weather report, and head outside... only to head back in to change into shorts and a tank top.

You then spend the entire day outside, thoroughly energized by the lovely weather.  You weed, you mow, you till, you fertilize, you plant.  At the end of the day you grill and chill.

The next morning you groan.  If you were smart, you aren't sunburned.  But you're still awfully sore.

Resurrection

It has been a while since I blogged here.  There's a reason.

Meet G.  In the last post in this blog I was 5 months pregnant.  Shortly thereafter, I found the combination of 3rd trimester pregnancy and keeping up with the mammoth garden and yardwork a bit much.  Oh, I could keep up - barely - but at the end of the day I was generally too tired to write about it.

G is about 6 months now.  So we're past the chronic sleep deprivation phase and can re-visit a few things that have lagged behind.

We've had a positively abysmal spring.  It has been since late January that we've had one full weekend of sun.  And it's only this past weekend that it's warmed up enough to plant things.

We've scaled back this year, especially compared to last year.  We've planting only two beds, containing tomatoes, red and white onions, shallots, eggplant, peppers, jalapenos, carrots, beans, peas, lettuce, spinach, squash, zucchini, cucumbers.  We'll add some herbs, garlic and annuals in a week or so.  We wanted to keep it a bit simple.  Mr. Trouble looks like he's going to be an early crawler, so I don't expect we'll have much peace once he gets going.

In other news, we've been soliciting bids to come up with a master plan for the back yard.  The idea being that, once we have an overall plan, we can implement sections of it as time and budget allow.  Stay tuned for that!

More veggies harvested & corn progress

Harvest - 7/25

Peas

Squash, Zucchini and Cucumbers

Peppers, Jalapeños, Tomatoes and Eggplant

Minestrone

Harvest - 8/1

Eggplant, Peppers, Poblanos, Jalapeños, Cucumbers, Tomatoes, Beans

(not pictured: garlic, onions, shell beans)

Also, back on July 10th, the corn was just over my head:

Here it is today:

And that's The Spouse at 6'5"

Pea Harvest

Reviewing the garden in recent weeks, it was becoming increasingly clear that the teepee trellises were absolutely inadequate for the peas. When I went out there today, I found them leaning well to the east, squashing some of the bean plants. So, I made the decision to cut them down, harvest the peas and do a second planting.

Half the pea plants cut down and waiting to be gone thru.

Handfull of peas

Harvested pea pods

Garden Update - July 2010

Overview

Me next to the corn (I'm 6')

From on top the ladder

Looking back at the house

Other corner, on top the ladder

Radishes, Peas and Tomatoes

The largest one is about the size of my fist. I'm not kidding.

Peas have set flowers!

And two early, early tomatoes!

One week later

Oh, dear. I'm not sure how we're going to eat all this...

Garden Update

Tomatoes

Peppers, Jalapenos, Habaneros, Onions

More tomatoes, eggplant, tomatillos

Radishes, Lettuce, Carrots, Onions, Shallots, Collards, Kale

Corn, squash, garlic

Kale, Collards, Cucumbers, Squash

Beans, Beans, Beans

Peas and Spinach

More beans

Chard and Carrots