It’s been cold enough this past week that some garden plantings have been paused. Nonetheless, plenty of things are underway.
Big day. Entire garden is finally cleaned up and tilled. Controversies about tilling aside, things look good. Normal amount of glacial till has worked its way up with the frost, creeping Charlie is easily raked up- roots and all. Soil looks nice down to six inches of till and the small patch of nettles at the base of the grapes will boil up to a tasty cooked green.
The many forms and stages of early asparagus
Hops is quite prolific on the 45th parallel. One of the challenges of the early season is to keep trimming the new bine wanna-bees to allow the chosen ones to be prolific bearers as well as growers!
Many are at 12″ now and so it is time to build the hop pole. 21′ high with eight runners an a few diagonal lines to a lower 12′ pole. A little heat and a little moisture and they’ll be off
A few more updates
Things going well:
Peas are up about 1/2″
Lettuce is planted
Chard (first planting) is in
French thyme is up and robust (eggplant sandwiches soon?)
Rhubarb has been eaten and is bound for a crisp this weekend
With some much desired rain on the way this week I took some time away from the bathroom rebuild to get dirty. Two days of 80 degrees F with increasing humidity can only mean rain ahead when the cool temps return. We are running with high temps about 25 degrees above normal right now. The seasoned gardener says, “wait for it, frost is coming again” but the passionate gardener remarks “this could be the one- tomatoes by the end of June”. Here’s what’s up
First a quick look at the timing of pea planting over a few past years:
2013
May
25
Peas replanted before the rain(again)
2015
May
12
peas planted
2016
April
4
peas planted
2017
April
8
Peas planted
2018
May
5
Peas planted
2020
March
27
Peas planted
So, my peas are in the ground this year on April 5, somewhat earlier than most. I plant them in a box along the north fence so they can climb when they are ready. In a week or so they will get a row of radishes in front of them. Note that the major garden cleanup and tilling has not yet happened. Here’s the box after planting:
Peas underground!
Glad to report that I’ve got about 30 onions in the ground ahead of the rain. Just onion ‘sets’ at this time with the bulbs planted close enough that I can pick green onions to eat as the spring progresses and thin the rows at the same time. Last year I had great success with the onions in boxes, so I’m trying the same this year to see if it was a fluke. Last year I also had some amazing luck with onion seeds! I’ll let you know when I get the seed in the ground.
Note the rhubarb just north of the onions
Just a few more notes for today. The mini-greenhouse is ready to go. Hope to get the seedlings out over the weekend. Speaking of the seedlings: the ones with a warm pad under them are up and about with the second set of leaves due any day now. The seedlings without a heat pad are not yet up- but soon! If I wasn’t such a miserly gardener I would run out and get another heat pad.
Shelves up, weights holding it down, sensor in place
Seriously, those little trays have beautiful seedlings
All the early planting is complete with seeds in the tray and on the heat pad for the list of plants below. Thirteen varieties this year but I’ll supplement them with a few more from the markets come the end of May. This year the trays are filled with either Burpee’s Seed starting media (on sale last weekend) or the McKenzie version of the same (also on sale including the tray and watering tray). A big shout out to Isaac and our own MacKenzie for donating a few heirlooms from their visit to the Seed Starters store downriver in Iowa.
I’ll update things as they push up out of the soil. remember that the calendar on the right edge of the page (in the menu on your phone) contains germination and planting information from many years.
One update from the garden. Last night at twilight it was 71 degrees F. Tonight it was 34! Gardening on the 45th parallel is all about patience. Nonetheless, the hops is (are?) up and ready to run. Here’s a photo. We’ll have the usual competition between the bines as they race up to 21′ this spring. Haven’t decided how to name each of the bines this year. Should have 8-9 of them, suggestions open. No more bicycle racers but the dwarves plus Snow White plus the evil queen might work. Wonder if I’ll need to pay royalties?
The first of the hops pokes through
Here’s what was planted today. 2020 indicates seeds left over from last year.
Time to get things started for this year’s garden. Seeds have been purchased, garden layout is planned and the snow has left. Some rain is expected over the next couple days and up here on the 45th parallel snow and freezing is still an option, but not for long. All eyes are on the mighty lilac whose blossom predicts the time to plant the early crops and to see the crabgrass germinate. Here’s a quick update, seed lists and such will follow in the next post.
Too early to be cleaning up the winter leaves and such. Nonetheless the chives – oregano – rhubarb are up!
Bird’s nest in the grapes?!
One of my sons stopped by the garden to trim the grapes this weekend. Significant trimming was needed. All new growth was cut back to two buds and the dead material removed. Things had gotten so bad that a bird had built a nest in the center of the vines. The Frontenac is looking healthy, the Edelweiss is shedding its bark but was the big producer last year. My son has convinced me to reset the trellis using some wire vises. Look for the process and results as spring continues.
Rain barrels, seed trays filled with peat moss, and the sole sorghum.
And finally, rain barrels are up and ready for tonight’s rain. With the sizes of my various roof sections about 1/3″ of rain is needed to fill three barrels distributed around the house. Should be more than enough rain falling over the next two days.
Thanks for reading. The next post will share the seed starting process and give details on seed selection and more.
Patiently waiting for warmer days and rain some progress is being made on the tundra garden. The hops are adding almost a foot a day as they climb to the top of the 21′ pole. Note my attempt at a may-pole type construction with the hoop near the top. Found it on an old coat rack in the garage- perfect. I’m hoping it will keep the bines separated until they reach the top. Once again, most of my work on the hops this time of year is snipping the competing sprouts as they arrive. They do taste good sautéed in a bit of garlic and butter.
Asparagus after last night’s harvest
Four rows planted but still brown
Hops + Oregano
Slowly working my way to prep the southern end of the garden. Should be set by midweek. Just in time for a possible freeze! Here’s a quick update:
All seeds are up. Just waiting for the second set of leaves so I can spread some mulch and compost.
Peas are climbing the chicken wire. Radishes are a bit slow after breaking through the surface.
Cabbage, brussels sprouts, kale and broccoli all transferred as sets with cages to give the baby rabbits a bit of a challenge.
Asparagus is being eaten daily. Hope to get another week or so of harvests. My favorite spring crop.
Rhubarb has been sampled and I think that tomorrow I’ll bake a pie using it and my mom’s rhubarb custard pie recipe. My other favorite spring crop.
Potatoes have been cut up and planted. We seldom buy seed potatoes. Seems that we always a have few volunteers full of developing eyes.
Some big garden days had things looking good for today’s gentle rain showers. The top image shows the greenhouse with seedlings and my re-purposed sensor and heating pad. Things appear to be growing with a good number of the broccoli emerging and some of each of the tomatoes doing the same. I’ll update this with more detail soon, definitely an experiment in technique.
The three images in a row show my first two seed rows in the garden (being a good math/ sci-fi person row 0 is to the right of the top row). This process starts with a couple good tilling sessions. Then I dig down the row to the depth of a spade and toss the soil through the sieve shown at the end of the row and in the last post. This removes the rock and pebbles and breaks up the clumps. It also leaves a great pile of loose dirt.
The loose dirt gets mixed with compost and either sand or Vermiculite and then returned to the row. A good garden raking creates the bed which is then fitted with a soaker hose. The seeds get planted on either side of the hose in a wide row format then covered and patted down. In the left picture you can see the light-colored Vermiculite. The center image shows the soaker hose placement and the right image has the seeds planted and markers placed.
Before I leave a couple of quick shots of the state of the rhubarb and the asparagus. The asparagus picture is a bit of a “Where’s Waldo”- see if you can find the spears. You’ll note that I still have some cleanup in the asparagus bed, not to worry. The good news is that after the day-long rain today I checked and several of the spears are ready to pick for breakfast tomorrow!
Next up will be an update on the hops race and a plea for suggestions on growing garlic on the 45th parallel. No buds on the grapes yet- fingers crossed.
A beautiful spring day meant lots of prep work on the garden. Before the soil tilling and glacial till removal I pulled the handful of horseradish plants that were showing.
Typically I harvest horseradish in the fall and process it into delicious horseradish sauce to be used with the heavier meals of late fall and winter. By spring a few plants emerge that I typically leave alone so that by fall I’ve got another bucket of long chubby roots. The spring harvest is typically light and yields a half-pint to pint of sauce. Looks like this year will be no different.
View from the bottom
Ready to plant
The soil sifter!
Today’s goals involved working the top half of the vegetable garden to prep it for planting some early spring seeds. The photo on the left is after the first run of the tiller. The center photo shows the top after two more tills and rock removal. The center photo is taken from the top right of the photo on the left.
My garden hero at the start of this adventure was James Crockett of PBS and Victory Garden fame. It should be noted that when he set up his gardens for the show he had all the soil hauled in including enough peat moss to give a 50/50 blend of peat and soil.
I created this garden decades ago by spading over the prairie grasses that were there before we built the house . Continued spading and eventually continued tilling (I’m on my second tiller) along with occasional additions of composed manure, peat moss, sandbox sand at the end of summers, and vermiculite has produced a fertile topsoil. The garden today has a good 6-8″ of topsoil on top of glacial till. Sadly, that glacial till consists mostly of clay and pebble to fist-sized rock. The rocks work their way up into the topsoil layer during the freezing and thawing processes of the winter. New buckets of rock every spring. Permaculture practices might make this easier but they would require the cardboard from dozens of appliance stores :-). In the early years we would buy handfuls of small toys from dollar stores and such. Neighborhood kids would come over and we’d hand them an empty ice cream bucket. They would mostly fill the bucket with rocks and then get to pick some toys from the collection.
The photo on the right shows my rock sifter. The wide top has 1/2″ hardware cloth stapled under it. About two-thirds of the way down there is an opening in the cloth the size of a five gallon bucket. There is a bucket under this hole. I throw a shovel of rock and soil on the top of the sieve, the rocks roll down into the bucket, and the soil falls through the hardware cloth. The whole thing can lean over my wheelbarrow to collect the soil if it needs to be rolled to another part of the garden. Today the sifted soil collected in a large pile that will eventually be raked out as part of the first row.
While second-guessing my early planting of the peas and radishes I’ve been able to clear some additional garden space. This week saw the oregano/ hops box and the northern circle prepped for the rains ahead.
Rustic Oregano and Hops Box
For years my oregano and hops have shared the same raised box. The 21′ hops pole sets through the holes in the blocks on the left of the image. The rough-looking soil in the image will soon have bushes of oregano up and shortly thereafter a couple dozen hop bines will emerge hoping to make the cut and be one of the six bines. Both oregano and hops propagate very well and the struggle to keep them in the box continues.
Our Woodland Circle
In the far back of the lot is a small circle of rocks that will soon spring to life with jack-in-the-pulpit, anemone, a miniature apple tree and other local wonders. Managed to get it cleared today and not long after this picture redistributed some mulch to give some ground and sun cover until the level come out on the tree.
My jack love goes back to my grandma Demulling who would drag me out of the house when I was little to see “jack” peeking out of his pulpit in the small flower garden outside my bedroom.
Stump Being Readied for Plants
We are now proud owners of two stumps where grand oak trees once stood. This one out front has been home to a collection of perennials in pots for a couple years. Staying with the theme of prep work for summer I filled in some new cracks and holes with epoxy filler yesterday and will get to sanding it tomorrow before adding a couple new layers of polyurethane.
The other stump was created last fall and will need the whole prep process. I’ll post a step by step when the time comes. My favorite epoxy wood filler- JB Weld of course.
Well then, with the temp up to 62F and rain all day tomorrow who wouldn’t plant their peas? The so-called winter we just finished resembled 2016 and in that year onions, radishes, asparagus, and rhubarb were all up and healthy by the end of next week. So, I cleared the peas box (special soil and a full fence to keep the baby rabbits at bay) and planted an assortment of pea varieties and a line of radish. Let’s hope the peas don’t cross-pollinate!
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My strategy is to take seeds remaining from the last couple years, mix them up, and fill the row. Some are too old to germinate, some will just sit in the cold and rot, but some may poke through the soil in a week and give us some veg by mid-May. Fingers crossed, I’ll post an update.
For those noticing the state of the garden to the left of the box- too moist and heavy to work. With a rainy weekend ahead I’m guessing it will be another week before I can get to it. I did trim the raspberries this week and one of my kids stopped by to trim the grapes. A great kindness!
Be well. Check or subscribe to the calendar to compare notes over the years or with your experience.
Join me for a year of reconstruction and rebuilding in the garden on the 45th parallel. Work and college kept me way too busy the past couple years and although we’ve certainly had some great meals from the garden the lack of attention has kept productivity low. There will be much more time for invention and attention this year.
Getting a jump on this year’s new projects we had to replace a shed destroyed by a falling tree last summer. The neighborhood had a wonderful collection of red oaks that over the years has slowly given way to oak wilt. One of them, dead for a few years, fell our way- or at least our direction. The back half of the shed it hit was recoverable and moved to become an open shelter for firewood. Half of the room panels were cut up and now provide a similar rain shelter elsewhere. Finally one of the side panels might end up being shelving for the wood planting shed. There’s always something isn’t there.
Look ahead for information and the process of installing a new fence and gate- after buying the lot we built the original garden before breaking ground on the house foundation, the fence lasted for many decades. Netting and some way of making it work needs to be added to protect the grapes from Japanese Beatles- the warmer winters have taken their toll. Some additional raised beds and some repurposed mechanical inventions are also in order.
The indoor greenhouse is set for the indoor starters in April and I’ve already got a couple seed packets for the trays. The garden calendar linked on the right gives planting times over the past decade. Winter’s ability to hold back spring varies so much year to year, but this year I’m feeling like spring will come early.
Gardening on the 45th Parallel 