Spring fever

Winter is finally winding down and it's about time! We have been drawn outside by the longer, warmer days and now lots of exciting things are happening in the garden. Vegetables are being seeded, flowers are being seeded, trees are being seeded; we have big ol' seed orders coming in from all over the place. Chamomile, echinacea, comfrey, giant solomon's seal, lettuce, mustard greens, asparagus, stinging nettle AND MUCH MORE are going in the ground in the next couple months. Here are some of the seeds we picked up from fifth season a couple weeks ago:



Here's me seeding some trays:



and here's where they live- right next to our shower. The broccolis are growing like crazy, about an inch a day.





Quinten and I spent a couple days pruning some apple trees that were already on the property. They have never produced in their 10+ years and they have also never been properly taken care of. We took out at least 2/3 of the total tree mass from these overgrown monsters. Now they can breathe a bit; hopefully with a little love they will squeeze out some apples. Here you can see one of the trees in front of the pile of wood we took out of it.



I finally planted our sweetshoot bamboo that spent the winter in a haystack house. I want it to run a certain way, so I made trenches on either side that are cover cropped and full of good topsoil.






Here's a picture of Taz watching me put in an echinacea bed:



Our annual beds are coming to life. Potatoes have been planted, lettuce/mesculin has been seeded, and the onions are waking up from their winter hibernation. I fed them some kelp meal tea that was leftover from the bamboo and they are practically glowing now. You can also see one of our big compost piles, with lots of new leaves added that we raked up off the driveway.





Now it's time to start installing the fence (all the parts arrived yesterday), which is going to involve a huge amount of work and probably a significant learning curve on my part. Stay tuned for updates.

-Ash