Grow-Along Week 8

Happy Beltane / May Day everyone!

May is always a turning point for all of our preparations. In just another week, our little tomatoes and peppers will be moving to the raised beds outside and many of our other veggie and fruit varieties will be planted from seed. We are so thrilled to be able to plant all of our gardens with plants we grew from seeds ourselves this year! What are your biggest accomplishments in planning or planting so far?


Despite some chilly weather and lots of rain lately, our outdoor sprouts are doing fantastically! Due to some encroachment of local wildlife, we've put up a temporary chicken-wire fence around our sprouted beds to protect the delicate little plants from nibbling beasties. Ok... so we're only combating deer and rabbits, but when you lose an entire bed of sprouts to the nibbings of wildlife, you start to look at the wildlife a bit differently. ;) Our peas are coming up strong and we'll be adding netting trellises for them as soon as it is dry enough to construct them outside. (It has rained for the last 4 days in a row here!) Our lettuces are looking great and should provide us with some bountiful and beautiful salads in the near future. The strawberries are opening their first flowers, and the horseradish is proving to be just as vigorous as ever! Look out jelly lovers! The mint bed is getting ready to go full blast again this year, so we should have plenty of chocolate-mint jelly in the somewhat near future.

Blauschokker Peas

Super Sugar Snap Peas

Half-Pint Peas

Strawberry Blossom

Farmer's Market Lettuce Blend

Optima Butterhead Lettuce

Chocolate Mint

Apple Mint

Horseradish

Nate's herb beds are looking plentiful this year since most of the plants he has growing are now 2 years old and are really starting to fill out. Some of his sage plants are actually starting to show signs of new growth which is exciting since we thought that the Polar Vortex winter did them in. He's also started some new varieties from seed that he will be adding to one of the beds that we just cleared out. He keeps insisting he wants to move that gargantuan Comfrey plant, but I think it is better off staying put since any tiny bits of tap-root left in the ground would each sprout a whole new plant. The Comfrey usually gets to be about as tall as I am and the bees love the flowers. Since it is such a vitamin and mineral rich plant, we use the abundance of leaves it grows for herbal remedies as well as for poultry fodder and mulch for our veggie beds. If you have the space for it, Comfrey really does pay you back in its versatility.

The Sage is Sprouting!

Comfrey

Valerian, Angelica, and St. John's Wort

Inside, the tomatoes and peppers are still doing wonderfully and have been spending whole days outside on the porch. They are still coming in at night since it has been rather cool and rainy lately, but I expect they will be fully ready to move outside full-time in about another week. We started a second round of California Wonder Bell Peppers to replace the duds we had on the first go. We also started seeds for Tigger Melons, Musquee de Provence Pumpkins, Wee Be Little Pumpins, and White Gooligan Pumpkins in addition to Nate's new herb starts. Cucumbers and some flowers for cutting and drying will be started in peat pots soon as well in order to give them a head-start but also to minimise the trauma to their roots. We also have a few varieties of flowers and herbs that will be seeded directly outside in another week or two.

The Tomato Jungle

The Pepper Forest

Newly planted seedlings

In other news about the Micro-Farm,  our first batch of chicks for this year have just moved out to join the big girls in the henhouse. Believe me, I am glad! Not that I don't love my little pullets, but the amount of dust they were creating in the grow-room was getting a bit overwhelming. The transition seems to be going smoothly so far and at least half of the little girls got the idea of how to go into the coop at bedtime by watching their big sisters. It usually takes a few days for them to learn to use the ramp to go in the coop , so we were thrilled to have a few advanced learners for a change. I went out in the run today with a feed-scoop full of sunflower seeds to treat the Chicken-Brigade and while I was there, I flipped over a few pallets and boards we have in the run and uncovered quite a few HUGE worms that the girls all gobbled down with delight. Never let it be said that Dusty Rose hens want for spoiling. ;)

Older hens foraging for worms

The Six-Pack of Youngsters

Jamie Bass sends us the following updates from her growing micro-farm:

• We have sunflowers and buttercrunch lettuce sprouting in my the new bed I made for Kerrigan and myself. She also has marigolds sprouting, but I had a hellacious time getting a decent picture of that.
  
  
  
• This is from the vegetable garden. There's buttercrunch lettuce, broccoli and bloomsdale spinach on the far left. Black beauty zucchini and yellow squash the next row in, then a whole mess of weeds with green beans in the center of the row. Oh! And that weird lattice thing along the back is the trellis that we made for the peas that are right in front of it.
  
  
  
• And this is the newly sprouted pumpkin patch. On Monday there were no signs of life there whatsoever. Now, there are 14 pumpkin vines sprouting. I sprinkled some slightly amended potting soil over it on Monday hoping to keep the soil underneath from washing out in heavy rain (pretty much any red soil that we have has a considerable amount of clay, so it washes away easily and doesn't hold moisture for crap).
  
  
  
• And these are my ridiculously eager eggplant & tomato seedlings, which I'm desperately hoping to get in the ground next week.
  
  
  
• AND the slightly ragged-looking and highly silly chicks. They keep taking turns trying to fly across the brooder.
  
  
  

Stell is still thawing out but she had a really neat project she made for her garden this week:

• It's been raining out. A lot. And cold. (There is still foot-thick ice over the majority of the bay 6 blocks away. Makes for COLD wind all the time.) So still nothing planted. But I made garden markers! They're not done yet. Still need a final firing. But I'm happy with them and need to get on the ball and get the rest of them done. I think I got 2/3 of the way through the list. 
  

  
  
  

Well, that's it for this week! Until next time, Happy Gardening!!

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! :)