See the plant nursery in the window? Pretty nice “digs” for them, if you’ll pardon the pun.
We try to use as much space as possible for planting. Even vertical shelving and mismatched planters. Soon the pots and shelves will be screened by moon flower and morning glory vines.
Rhubarb!! A seriously under-used food plant.
One of the lucky pepper plants that survived the greenhouse demolition. We don’t really know which of 4 varieties if may be!
Finally! I got to plant my garden. It has been a crazy spring. 80 degree March and 30 degree April. Wind heavy storms. I happily started seeds in the parlor windows in mid February so my little pretties would be ready to transfer out to the big outdoors greenhouse by mid to late March. The weather was so nice in March, I was pleased to re-pot the now leggy tomatoes, ground cherries, and peppers, etc. and haul them all out to the sunny warm shelter of the outdoor greenhouse.
That’s when it started.
The Crazy Spring. It was like Spring sprung a spring and went bouncing off its track. The weather didn’t just turn cold, it turned frozen with night temperatures plummeting to 23 degrees and daytime ones nudging 40 and 45. Certainly not growing weather. I took to hauling the many flats of plants back into the house at night and then, out to the greenhouse by day.
Eh…it’s Michigan.
That’s what I told myself. You do what you have to, to garden in Michigan springs.
Then, it warmed up a smidge and I let the plants have a sleep-over in the outside greenhouse. That’s when disaster struck! Fantastical high winds. They arrived as if on a freight train and demolished my greenhouse and spilled my lovelies all over. Broken stems and dashed harvest. I did my best to find and re-plant what I could and hauled them back into the parlor to stay. Then, fortunately, I had more seeds, I started new plants.
Here is a young row of strawberries interplanted with asparagus. In normal years, the asparagus would be much shorter! Plus, it has been left to grow healthy roots instead of stalks this first year.
That is one of the great things about starting a garden with seeds instead of nursery plants. Extra seeds.
Well. I finally got my gardens planted. The recovered older plants are in the ground with smaller ones. Rows of seeds are now sprouting into red trails of beet leaves and fine tendrils of newly emerging green onions.
There’s cabbage, broccoli, rutabaga, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, horseradish, sweet corn, peas, beets, ground cherry, squashes, beans, pickles, lots of herbs, nasturtiums, sunflowers, morning glories, marigold….and lions and tigers and…
Beets make a pretty row of red and green. My how the chickens love the little ones I pull out to thin the row.
Already in the ground were the perennial plants. Strawberries, Asparagus, Rhubarb, Onion, Garlic, Blueberries, Raspberries, Currants, Apples, and Pears. I’m loving my rhubarb harvest right now. Couldn’t pick the asparagus as it was planted only last spring and it is best to give it a year or so without harvest to let the plant focus energies on the root growth. The first crop of strawberries froze off but there’s more on the way. We surely lost the pears and apples to the Crazy Spring. I’m also getting lots of spring perennial herbs and the onions that make our food practically dance with flavor.
I can’t wait to start canning season.
I’ve been teaching a lot of canning lately and it is certainly the season
Herbs! Oregano and tarragon in front. Planted area for basil and cilantro next. Then, fennel, lavender, lemon balm, pineapple sage, dill, chives…
for canning pickled asparagus. Bygone Basics guests enjoy taking their green jars of treasure home. Now it is my turn. This weekend…I’m canning as much as possible of this neat treat…for ourselves and our guests.
After that…Jam!…of the strawberry rhubarb varieties…and then…summer produce will be in full swing and all harvest will break loose.
What is your favorite food to grow?
What do you look forward to “put by?”
We grow things in the ground and in pots and buckets….here is some basil that will flourish in vertical space.
A newly “grounded” plant. It had just been rained on so it looks a tad bedraggled.
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