OMG, I thinned the carrots!

And it's just as exciting and monumental as the title of this post indicates.  I've been terrible about thinning out my carrots in the past, but this year, I actually made it out into the garden and did what I believe is a very fine job getting them all straightened out.  The thinning was desperately needed, as I had monster clumps of carrots starting.  So I thinned the carrots (and to a lesser extent, the parsnips) to about 2 inches apart.  While I was on a roll, I also thinned my squash, beets and kale, and added a few more fennel seeds to try to fill in the empty spaces in that bed.  We are relatively on top of the weeds this year, and while my eggplants are still struggling against the predation of the flea beetles, the garden dust has helped and I think they may pull through.  We've also had a good amount of rain this week, and so I haven't had to water.  Mike has been regularly giving compost tea to the asparagus, tomatoes, eggplants, and to the trees, and that seems to make them noticeably perkier and greener.

On the pest front, I've made tin foil collars for my brussels sprouts, broccoli, asparagus, eggplants, and peppers, and that has helped tremendously with the cutworms.  I've also been using garden dust on the eggplants, broccoli and cauliflower.  The potato bugs are here, so I've been hand picking them and their eggs, and dreading the emergence of the larvae.  Today I noticed the first herd of cucumber beetles, who are going to town on my squash, so I'll have to do something there.

Speaking of trees, we have deer nibbling on the apple trees.  Apparently even though we added a third dog, they have done nothing to deter deer.  Weird, since they're all fantastic at barking at the wind....So Mike has purchased some deer repellent, and is hoping that it will work.

Fennel

Snap peas are coming!

Shell peas, spinach, snap peas, and pole beans

Edamame (front) and green beans

Tomatoes

Eggplants in their tin foil collars

Close-up of the sad, dusted eggplants in their collars

Walking onions

Shallots - apparently they really can't take a joke about being transplanted

Makeshift hotcap for a particularly delicate brussels sprout

Broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts

Glorious potatoes

Parsnips and carrots, pre-thinning

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.