Most Eventful Week Yet

 

The greenhouse is virtually empty. The tomatoes are in the ground. The strawberries are in the ground. The lettuce, arugula, spinach, kale? They're in the ground. Two different varieties of zucchini, Hubbard squash, spaghetti squash, beets, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, banana peppers, ruby red peppers, garlic, cucumbers, beans & peas? Can you guess where they are? They're in the ground.

And they've been watered in and mulched with leaves and grass/clover clippings from the lawnmower, depending on the bed.  

We also got three sets of bare root pollinator attractors for the no-mow areas under the trees. Those had to be planted out yesterday. 

A couple of things learned for this year: 

1) There's really no reason to start seedlings before about 3/15. They only get leggy & too big for the greenhouse. Unless they are peppers. Peppers we could probably start in October...

2) Keeping last year's leaves for mulch seems like a good idea so far. I'm hoping that adding yesterday's grass clippings as mulch will help, too. They're mostly clover from the lawn, and I know that they use clover as a green manure, so I'm guessing that it will be full of plant nutrition as it dissolves.

We have had to use the hose quite a lot to keep things wet. There's just been no rain accumulation in a couple of weeks, and next week looks dry, too. The rain barrel has been empty for a while.

On the other hand, we haven't had any punishing wind storms beating down the seedlings as I put them out last week. In fact, it's been very still, and the sun has been especially golden. The crab apple trees are all still full of pink, the leaves are just now unfolding in their full spring green. Our bird bath has been a busy place. We've had visits from robins and cardinals and black capped chickadees and blue jays and some neat little bird that looked a lot like a finch but had a red head which we need to identify with the bird book. No hummingbird sightings, but we've got the feeder up, and the giant sunflowers that they liked so much last year, we've ringed the deck with them. They're just little sprouts right now, though. On their way up. We've also had a pair of mallards in the yard from time to time. This one came to visit on Thursday morning while I was at work in my office. (Unfortunately, the screen didn't do any favors for the picture, but if I'd opened the door, I'd have scared away the duck.)

The tulips are thriving out front, the iris are coming in, the peonies are popping up, and the dogwood is showing signs of life. The apple trees are still sticks, but we water them every day. 

Mad schemes of magic trellises and plant supports involving wire go through my head at night, but I held off this weekend on making any purchases to concentrate on getting things in the ground. And there was a pesky 15 mile fast finish run to get ready for the June 13 marathon that I had to take care of.

Everything is a bit busier with Kiki out of action with foot surgery.

Still - we'll get through that, and the garden really looks set to thrive this year.