Seeds in the ground

We had an amazingly productive weekend, in large part due to a very helpful visit from my parents, and Mike's passion for all things tractor-related.  On Sunday, Mike put in the black and red raspberries, and my mom helped me weed the garden and plant our first set of cool weather crops.  Taperman assisted by entertaining Landon - a crucial job.

In the garden, we now have shelling peas, snap peas, spinach, radishes, arugula, chioggia and golden beets, harukei turnips, kale, shallots, and scallions all tucked into their beds.  This is by far the earliest I've managed to do any direct seeding, and I hope that means that I'll start getting some good harvests by early summer.

In total for the orchard, we planted 15 fruit trees, 9 hills of blackberries, and 20 red raspberry canes and three four-cane hills of black raspberries.  Next weekend I'll plant carrots, parsnips, and potatoes.

Hello garlic!

Prepping for red raspberries

Yes, Gramps - it's much better to see the chickens up close!

I'll take that, thank you very much

Farming buddies

Is there a 12 step program for people who buy too many fruit trees?

If there is, then you should sign us up.  Immediately.  Today Mike put his new tractor, with its fancy post hole digger, to good use, and we planted 15 fruit trees, and 9 blackberry bushes.  Tomorrow we do raspberries.  It may be excessive, but it was also very exciting (if we're being honest, I think that Mike and Landon were mostly excited about all of the tractoring, but still, excitement was there).  Mike has done so much work getting the land for the expanded orchard yesterday, and it's wonderful to see the plan starting to take shape.

Mike putting in the first tree of the day

Adding pea stone to act as mulch

Soaking the bare roots in agri-gel

Mom multi-tasking!  While he looks very still in this picture, Landon spent most of the time trying to jump out and play with the water.

Bare-root trees in the box

Meanwhile, inside the seedlings are looking good.  The eggplant finally germinated and seems happy, and the fennel, basil, tomatoes, and flowers are all growing as well.  None of my chinese lantern flowers have sprouted yet, but I'm not giving up hope on them yet.  As Mike pointed out today I don't have a spot in the garden picked out for them yet, so if they don't grow, it's not a huge loss.

Tomorrow will be our first outdoor planting day in the garden!  It's been cold here for the past few weeks, and we've been dealing with some sad personal events, so I postponed my original planting plans.  Tomorrow, though, my parents are going to come to help wrangle Landon, and I'm planning on planting my peas, radishes, scallions, shallots, kale, turnips, carrots, beets, and endive.  We're also going to put in the raspberry bushes.  Well, some of the raspberry bushes.  Since I had that whole golden raspberry impulse buy situation we'll have another round once those arrive.  I'd say "and then we'll stop," but even I don't believe that.  Maybe after next year (with the blueberries, elderberries, and kiwi), then we'll stop.

We've got germination

(This video only seems to want to go to the top of the post, but you know what, that's fine.  It's adorable and tangentially farming related).

All signs are pointing to this being the year that we actually come up with a thoughtful plan for the garden, and then follow it.  The seedlings are germinating beautifully in the mudroom, Mike has been working hard to clear out more land to expand the orchard, and even the baby has helped in the efforts.  Tomorrow we're hitting up Skillins to look at floating row covers, and we may even start to do some planting outside.  When I checked the beds this morning the soil temperature was only 40-45, so I'm not feeling behind despite the fact that I haven't gotten anything in the ground out there.

Our 13 new trees, plus raspberry and blackberry plants, arrived earlier this week, and they're all hanging out in the barn, to be planted hopefully this weekend.  Mike upgraded from a lawn tractor to a real (small) tractor, but the post-hole digger attachment hasn't arrived yet so the orchard plans are on hold for a few more days.  In the end, this is good, as we realized today that we need to take down two more trees where the orchard is going, and were able to better plot out where the fruit trees will be.  Plus, we used a sledgehammer to drive in the stakes to mark the future tree locations, and the baby thought this was absolutely hilarious.

I missed one tree in our Fedco order, and we found one last apple variety that we'd like to try, too, so next year in addition to starting the blueberries and elderberries, we'll also be getting a Frostbite apple and Cox's Orange Pippin apple.  And then we'll be done with apple trees.

Eggplant seedling tray - not much was happening this morning, but when I just checked, it looked like they have started germinating.  Phew!

Fennel and basil

Broccoli and cauliflower

The flower tray - marigolds, zinnias and nasturtiums

Second eggplant tray.  Again, not much happening yet.

Land that we've been clearing for the orchard.  That big tree in the middle comes down this week.

Bearcubs eating one of the little trees that Mike knocked down

Clearing out space for the blackberries.  He got stuck.  But then he got to use his truck to pull his tractor out, and it was awesome.

The seedlings are started!

I had two lovely helpers, who helped me get the seedlings started on Sunday morning.  Mamie was slightly more helpful than Landon, who didn't understand why I wouldn't let him eat the seeds, seed starting materials, or containers.  I'm such a strict mother.

Also, let's all marvel at my new seed starting setup, made by Mike.  We need to set up the lights, and hook up the warming mats, but it's a thing of beauty even in progress.

I've started two 72 cell trays of various eggplant varieties, one tray of flowers, one tray of fennel/basil/purple tomatoes, and one tray of cauliflower/broccoli.  I was hoping to get some seeds in the ground outside this week, too, but we'll see if I get a chance.

Let the planting begin!

We just returned from a lovely weeklong vacation to the Caribbean, to find that the ground has mostly thawed in the garden.  Before we left, Mike built a new, improved, and greatly expanded seed starting shelving unit, and so this week I hope to both start seeds indoors AND do my earliest ever direct seeding in the garden.  As usual, by this point I've completely forgotten what seeds I ordered and what my original plans were, so it's time for me to sit down and make a rough plan as to when everything needs to get in the ground.  We also are expecting to get our fruit trees and canes from Fedco in the next couple of weeks, and I have a concert this weekend, so I realized today that I really do need to be a little more organized in my planting methodology this year to make sure it all gets done.  So, here goes, another fairly boring organizational post, but one that I hope will be tremendously helpful for me over the next few weeks (and next year, when inevitably I fail to remember when I planted everything the previous season).

Week of April 1 - April 14
Time to finish the garden cleanup!  We're in better shape than we were last year at this time, but there are still some beds that need attention, and we're adding compost to all of the beds, as well.

Direct seeding into the garden:
Parsnips
Sugarsnap peas
Arugula
Romaine lettuce
Beets
Scallions
Carrots
Radishes
Kale
Shelling peas
Rutabega

Start indoors
Fennel (translplant into garden mid-late May)
Flowers
Cauliflower (transplant into garden end of May)
Eggplant (transplant into garden first week in June)


Late April/Early May
Direct seeding:
Harukei turnips
Strawberry spinach
Second round of carrots, beets, radishes
Chard

Memorial Day weekend
Direct seeding:
Pole beans
Bush beans
Zucchini
Edamame (once soil warms to 60)
Winter squash
Cucumbers
Sunflowers
Buy tomato, pepper and brussels sprout seedlings and set out

Start indoors:
Green fleshed pineapple melon (plant out 2-3 weeks after sowing.  Also, figure out where to put this...)

July
Arat root parsley
Lettuces
Cold frame fall crops