Grow Along Week 5

Howdy everyone!

It is finally starting to feel like Spring here in Pennsylvania! We've been busy as bees lately cleaning up beds, planting seeds, planning new gardens, and getting new plants planted and situated. The energy here is amazing! :) As a result of all this, we've got a HUGE update for you all this week and we hope you'll be delighted to see how much is growing here. We would love to see what you are growing as well, so please do send us an email or Facebook message to share your gardening progress. Our goal with this blog and our Facebook page is really to create a community where we can all share ideas, techniques, and hopefully produce (seeds, fruits, veggies, etc) in the future.

Wow, so where to start? I suppose we'll start with the indoor plantlings since you all have been following their progress for the most part so far. The tomatoes and peppers are doing wonderfully. They are all sturdy, leafy plants that continue to plump up daily. As we mentioned last week, we greatly underestimated the amount of space we'd need under the grow lights once the little plants were ready to pot up. That lead to the purchase of a second, bigger grow light that we had to figure out how to accommodate in our craft-room turned grow-room. Our solution turned out to be simpler than we had first imagined. I reconfigured some shelves of a small greenhouse unit that we already had to be used as a stand to hold up the light which we set up on a folding table. The end result is pretty nifty and came in at a budget of free since we just repurposed an object we already had. Check it out:

 

We've been getting a ton done outside too since the weather has been so accommodating lately. We cleaned up and opened the first 8 of our 12 raised beds and started planting our early crops. So far we have planted 3 pea varieties including Blauschokker (an heirloom purple podded shelling pea), Half-Pint (a dwarf heirloom shelling pea brought to the US in 1850 from England), and Super Sugar Snap Peas (pretty obviously a snap pea). We seeded half our onion bed with Red Marble Cipollini onions and should be getting our Borettana Cipollini starts from Territorial Seed Company this week. We have had great success with smaller Cipollini onions in our raised beds in the past where traditionally sized onions never seemed to mature as readily. We re-planted our strawberry bed with Fort Laramie everbearing strawberry plants and hope to have some strawberries this year. We did put up a deer and bird prevention fence around the strawberries since our biggest problem with strawberries in the past has been that the deer eat the entire strawberry plants right out of the ground. (Look out for a future DIY post on how we built our super-cheap anti-critter fence!) We seeded our Parmex Ball Carrots, Red Beard Scallions and White Lisbon Scallions, Bloomsdale Spinach, Little Gem Romaine Lettuce, Optima Butterhead Lettuce, Farmer's Market Blend Mesclun (from Botanical Interests), and Sassy Salad Mesclun (also from Botanical Interests). 

The first 8 of our raised beds are open and at least partly planted!

On the other side of the house, we got our Faery Garden cleaned up, seeded with the wildflowers that we grow there to keep the Fae Folk, bees, and hummingbirds happy. We also have tulips, crocuses, and irises coming up (and some flowering) in the Faery Garden. Nate's herb garden is already showing flushes of green as well, he has Catnip, Angelica, St. John's Wort, Valerian, Comfrey, Sweet Woodruff, and Horseradish coming up strong. We finally potted up the Pink Champagne, Red Lake, and Consort Currants into temporary pots, but they will be planted into half-whiskey barrels and moved to the big garden soon. Our Top-Hat Blueberries (a dwarf variety well suited for container gardening) are showing buds too, and we look forward to a good number of berries on them this year. Yet to arrive are 2 full-sized blueberry bushes that will further add to our fruit selection. Not pictured, we did have one apple tree and one plum tree survive the wickedly cold winter and they are both showing signs of buds. We will have to replace their counterparts that did not make the winter to ensure pollination.

Our Faery Garden!

Nate's Herb Garden

Young Horseradish looks weird!

Blueberry Buds

Currants are potted up.

PHEW!! That was a huge update! On a slightly down note, we bid farewell to two members of our little Dusty Rose family this week. We came home from work on Monday to find a stray dog had broken into our chicken run and had been chasing our birds all over the yard. We lost two feathered friends in the fray. Our chicken-flock leader, Hideki, a silkie rooster gave his life protecting his hens from the dog, and our sweet little wood duck, Victoria, was a casualty as well. We will remember them both fondly and have given them both a proper burial under one of our dogwood trees as they both deserve to have a respectful rest. 

Rest peacefully, Hideki, you served your hens and our farm well.

We will miss you, Victoria, rest peacefully, Love.

This week, Stell posted her update to her blog, visit her Stuff Dungeon to see how her plans are coming along! We see some green there, Stell! We are so happy spring has made it Northwards for you! :)

Elaine has been busy visiting with her granddaughters and taking some much-needed time off in Walt Disney World this week, so she doesn't have an update to share today. We admit, we are a bit jealous of the vacation, and we can't wait until our family trip to Walt Disney World this coming October.

Until next week, Happy Growing!

If you want to join us in the Grow-Along, simply send us your gardening plans, pictures, or progress via Facebook, email, or in the comments below. We welcome everyone to the adventure! It is never too late to join us! :)