Path to Health: veggies

It's been such a mild winter here in western New York (and all of New England and the Mid Atlantic as well), and I've been hearing crazy stories about how how spring bulbs are starting to spring up already, and garlic is a foot tall in gardens. I got pretty curious about what's going on in my garden, so I took a stroll around the yard with my camera (and a good pair of boots, because it's muddy!).

And what do you know! The daffodil bulbs really are sending up shoots.

They're pretty small yet though, as you can see by their size compared to those leaves. And it's not all the bulbs; only the ones that are more out in the sun are popping up. The ones more in the shade are still sleeping.

Actually, I left some bulbs in the garage too long because I didn't know where to plant them, and I noticed they had started to sprout. So not wanting to waste something awesome, I stuck them in some vases.

So far, only one has bloomed, but it's such a fun thing to walk into the kitchen and see a beautiful blooming hyacinth. Plus, it smells awesome.

And you know what? My garlic is coming up, too!

But it's certainly not a foot tall. It usually gets about that big before it gets covered by snow anyway, so I'm not worried about it. It is, afterall, called German Extra Hardy and can withstand some pretty frigid cold snaps.

One thing I worried about with this warm weather was that my apples would break dormancy too soon and their buds would die. However, it looks like they're nice and sleepy still and should make it through to spring.

So while I was out there, I took a picture of my newest toy, too.

I got it all together on the Sunday after Christmas. It was quite a project, but not as bad as the reviews made it out to be. The box came with two pieces that weren't supposed to be there, and two pieces that I needed weren't there. Thankfully, they're not pieces that are structurally necessary, so I just put it together and contacted the company about it.

It's a really cool little planter! The planting space is about 6 inches deep, and the space underneath is good for storage. The clear plastic is pretty sturdy, but the black plastic, which covers the base part and is the tray for the soil to sit in, is flimsier. However, the frame is very sturdy and well designed, so if the plastic breaks, I figure I can replace it with wood or some other material and just keep reusing the frame. I like it a lot!

It's currently sitting in the cleared out raspberry spot. It's less windy there, and there's no threat of falling ice, but in the spring, we'll move it over to it's permanent home on the south side of the house.

There, between the raspberries and the concrete slab. And if I like it, who knows? Maybe I'll get another one and put it where the raspberries are. I don't know what variety those raspberries are, but I don't like them very much. The canes and the berries are really waxy, and my fingers are so sticky from wax after picking them. Plus the berries have a crumbly berry disease, and I'm not at all sure how to help the poor plants. But I suppose that's far enough down the road that I don't need to think about it right now.

So there's what's going on in the ole garden. It may look asleep, but things are still growing!

It's April, and in western NY, that means it's time to get outside and get digging. It's pretty muddy out, though, so every time I go out to the yard, I have to wear these:

And I'm out every day, because I'm just so excited about the return of spring. The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, the earth is greening. The hill sides are even turning from brown to red as the tree buds swell and ready for opening.

I suppose I should back up a bit and mention last year's garden, before I jump ahead into this year. We had a nasty winter in 2013-2014. It was not only incredibly cold (many weeks of -10 degree weather with up to -40 degree wind chills), but it was what they call an open winter; there was hardly any snow on the ground. Combining those two things wrecks a lot of havoc on nature. Many plants died; I lost my dwarf blueberries, my Russian red kale, my raspberries died down to the ground, and our chock cherry even died back a bunch. On top of that mess, we had a very cold and rainy summer. It seemed like it rained every other day. I didn't have to water but once a week, whereas in a normal summer, I have to water every day.

Despite all that, my garden did remarkably well! I got the best tomato crop I've ever gotten, even though everyone else in the area was having a terrible tomato year.

That's a 1.3 pound ox heart tomato.

Not all of my plants did as well as my tomatoes, but it was a successful year, all around. Because I'm a huge nerd and I love numbers and spread sheets, I kept track of how much produce I harvested and multiplied it by how much we'd pay for it if we'd bought it in the store. By year's end, I'd harvested $356.77 worth of fresh produce. I call that a success.

The winter we had in 2014-2015 was just as cold as the year before (actually, it was colder; we had the coldest February on record, seriously), but the difference is that we had a ton of snow. I think at its deepest, the snow was probably three feet high; of course, that's not counting the snow drifts or the places Chad piled up the snow as he shoveled it (probably 5 feet high at the tallest). The snow was a huge pain when we had to shovel it, but it did a lot of good for the garden. It provided a lot of protection to plants and kept the ground from freezing so deeply (or at all, in some places). Plus, I hear old timers call snow white fertilizer because of the tasty things it leaves behind as it melts. I'm not entirely sure what it leaves behind, but I tend to believe old timers.

I've been super anxious for spring to get here. I have lots of lovely plants in the basement going, gearing up to get planted in the next month or two:

Lettuce, coleus, petunias, and catnip.

Tomatoes, kale, onions, peppers, and unsprouted cabbage.

A close up of my tomatoes.

And a close up of my peppers!

I'm experimenting with wall-o-water type things this year. They're a water filled ring that you put around your tomatoes (or other plants) so that you can set them out early. The water collects and holds solar heat through the day, and then that heat keeps the plants from freezing to death at night. I'm planning on setting the tomatoes out four weeks early, which I hope should give me a much bigger harvest! And I figure if I kill off my tomatoes by accident, well, that's ok. It was a fun experiment, and I can always go buy starts at a nursery.

I bought two new blueberry bushes to put in pots last fall. I waited until the local nursery was having a half off sale. They were out of the bushes I had originally wanted, but by dumb luck, they had forgotten that they had a bunch of Pink Lemonade blueberry bushes in the back! Pink Lemonade blueberries are, well, pink blueberries, and I've been wanting some of those bushes for years now. And now I have two! I stuck them in the old blueberry barrels with some coffee grounds and hoped for the best. We ended up pulling them into the garage midway through winter, because we were sure they wouldn't make it with -16 degree nights. And, as far as I can tell, they have made it. The buds are swelling and greening up nicely!

I bought a couple blueberries at Home Depot last week, too, to act as pollinators. The PL blueberries are mostly self pollinating, but the tag says they do better with some friends. So I bought one Polaris, and one Chandler. I ended up putting them in the front of my main garden. It's hard to see them, but they're behind the green fencing on the right in this picture.


The main garden, all ready for planting.

And here's a close up of one of the new blueberry's buds, ready to open:

I had the best batch of compost last year that I've ever had, and I got a lot, too, so the gardens got a great boost last fall. I only had a couple of soil tests left from last year, so I only got to test a couple of my squares this spring. But from what I can see, that compost must have been pretty awesome stuff, because it looks like I have plenty of N, P, and K to last me through a good part of the season. Woo!

Gee, there's lots of updates, actually. I haven't even gotten to the apple trees.

Can you see them? They're those sticks in the green fencing.

Last year I bought two dwarf apple trees; one Goldrush, and one Liberty. They did surprisingly well last year; I even got one little apple forming, but Chad made me pick it off. Sigh. But he was right. Apparently, if you let these dwarf apples fruit too soon, they'll stop growing any taller. Their full size is 6-8 feet, and they're currently about 5 feet, but last year they were only about 3 feet. I think I'll probably let them fruit a little this year. I'm excited to try my own apples!

The exciting thing about these apples is that I'm going to try growing them completely organic, which I hear is quite a challenge. Obviously whoever said that didn't have access to Google! I found tons of info on the best ways to grow apples organically, and I've already started getting to work on it. I gave them a good spray of Neem oil as a dormant oil, to kill off any overwintering bugs, and once they fruit, I'm going to bag the baby apples so worms can't get access to them. Take that, nature! Plus, I have an amazing micro ecosystem in my yard. Because I use no pesticides and no artificial fertilizers, I have a lot of natural predators that keep the pest population in check.

Hmmm... anything else? I guess nothing major. I guess I'll finish this post off with pictures!