I suppose I could have called this Spring Planting instead, as we just put in our first seeds this weekend. Our garden was already growing as we planted garlic last fall. The garlic we tried planting last year didn’t get big enough in the short growing season, so we just used some of those bulbs to start.
See my gardening cupboard? It’s located in the garage next to my vehicle. It was ravaged this winter by a family of mice. We had all our leftover seeds in a bucket. There were a LOT of seeds, because I wasn’t very good about remembering what we had on hand, so I kept buying new seeds for the past couple years. Now there are just a few scattered seeds left … all over the shelves.
Oddly enough, they didn’t touch the leftover onion sets. I’m not sure why. The leftover garlic wasn’t so lucky. We experienced a week this winter where you would step out into the garage and get overpowered by the STRONG garlic smell! It was obvious they were chewing through them. (Maybe they’re Italian mice?) Finally Papa tossed the leftover garlic out into the snow. I love garlic, but it’s not a scent I want to be overwhelmed with at 7 am.
For now, we just purchased peas. Papa and I stapled a temporary string up and down the one raised bed to help guide us in planting. We did two rows at a time, then moved the string to the next section. That saved on the amount of string we needed, since we didn’t plan to leave it in place permanently.
All our hard work seems to have paid off in getting the garden prepped with good soil last year. All the beds are chock full of earthworms! I like to see that – to me, it’s a good indication of soil quality.
It may only be the first week of April, but the weather for our late winter / early spring has been so mild that there are plenty of signs of life around. The crocuses are in full bloom. The grass is greening up. Our rhubarb and the hostas are starting to peek out of the ground. I believe some of our fruit trees even have buds forming.
I love this time of year :-).