I was pretty excited to have a bunch of peonies in the fridge to sell this weekend. I went out this morning to check on them & add some more to the bucket, and there was ICE on top of the water.
Oops. It’s a new-to-us refrigerator, and I guess the temperature was adjusted to overzealously-cold.
The peonies are thawing right now. I hope they still look nice for Saturday!
The tomatoes made it into the ground yesterday. They’d been languishing on the porch for a while, so I felt they deserved to finally be planted.
I messed up and ordered my sweet potatoes TWICE. So I have twice as many as I’d planned. Good thing the garden is big. They are sitting in jars of water, waiting for the weekend when it’s supposed to actually hit 80.
Last night we planted a lot more field peas. They are not all in, but they are hopefully 75% complete. I have learned my lesson.. no more cover crops that you can’t broadcast spread until I have a tractor with a tow-behind seeder. One row at a time with the plate seeder is very, very tedious. It is fine for a pound or three of corn or beans, but 50 lbs of field peas really does take forever!
I also put the melon flat outdoors. I feel a little bad about this, because it’s 50 and rainy today, defying all forecasts to the contrary, but I’ll get them in the ground this weekend as well and then I’ll feel like they’re in their happy home.
It’s been a really cold, rainy May. I’m okay with that.. it’s given me a chance to catch up!
Planted last week: Potatoes, snow peas, the rest of the onion plants, herb seed, cut flower seed, carrots, beets, and a 1.5 acre pasture.
This week: Flowers, herb plants, and maybe some beans and corn. Progress on the field peas is slow.. it’s rather a chore. The wheat is up!
The rain is coming every 2-3 days. It’s great for the seed, but I can’t work out in the field when it’s pure mud. If conditions stay warm for more than three days in a row, maybe the tomatoes and potato seedlings will get to go out.
Earlier this spring I tripped on the stairs with a flat of lettuce seedlings. They had to be put in the ground immediately thereafter to ensure their survival, and the field was not plowed at that time. I ended up planting them in a bed I was making in the back yard. They are starting to look edible. If we have a few days of warm weather, I’ll have some lettuce for my early, pre-farmer’s market customers. Next year I hope for this space in the back yard to be a strawberry patch!
What is in:
broccoli plants
sugar and sweet peas
wheat
Some of the field peas
radishes
lettuce
A bit under half the onion transplants (900 out of 2200 or so.. at least that’s how many seeds there were, I don’t really believe they ALL came up)
red clover in the walkway
What is next:
potatoes (today, I hope)
snow peas & the rest of the field peas
more onions
herbs
assorted cut flowers
carrots, maybe (I’m tempted to wait for fall)
seeding 1.5 acres of pasture
Once all that’s in, then I’ll start thinking about the warm weather stuff. The tomato starts look great, the pepper starts are finally perking up, and the melon seedlings are warming my heart with their good looks.
It is difficult to plant all these things with an 18-month old. I haven’t figured out a way to do transplanting with him nearby, so when Mr. B. is not around, it’s raking & seeding only.
