Salads galore

No time this morning for pictures, but the garden is going like gangbusters.  We've been feasting on salads with our own arugula, mesclun mix, spinach, and radishes, and have been cooking with our own herbs, for a few weeks.  The harukei turnips are ready and have been amazingly tasty.  I've been roasting the turnips, and using the greens in egg scrambles and stir-fries.  Yum!  The shelling peas are setting flowers, potato plants are getting ready to flower, and everything for spring/summer is now planted and (mostly) germinating.

The bug issues have started (flea beetles and cutworms, I'm looking at you), and I had to replant my eggplant row because the flea beetles completely ravaged my first set.  Good thing I started such an excessive number of seedlings!  We've been spraying with neem oil to try to fend off the flea beetles until the plants get better established.  I've also had several plant losses to cutworms (two marigolds, an eggplant, two chinese broccoli plants), which just make me angry because those pests don't even eat the plants.  They seem to just be destructive because they can, and it's totally getting under my skin.  I've also seen a few potato bug eggs on my eggplants, but none so far on the potatoes.

Yesterday I tackled weeding the shallot bed, which I had covered with a row cover and then ignored for six weeks.  Apparently, that's really great for weed development, so that project took a while.  I also realized that I hadn't fully separated my shallot cloves, so I had to dig, separate, and re-plant them.  I went from having what I thought was 1/3 of a bed's worth of shallots to filling an entire bed, plus two other quarter beds.  At least we like shallots.

The brussels sprouts and cauliflower/broccoli seedlings that I started are still so sad, so I bought supplemental brussels sprouts at the farmer's market this week.  I'm still going to plant some of my own, but I think I'll need to cover them with milk cartons to give them a fighting chance, and still don't have high hopes.

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