It’s March in St. Louis, which means, weather-wise, that anything can happen. It’s been cold overall, fluctuating between hard freezes at night and mild temps during the day, forming a frost-pocked landscape on the square foot garden that I planted a couple weeks ago. Zach and I follow a familiar pattern: I kvetch about the gray weather, and he points out that it was sunny just five days ago, and we have a well-worn exchange about the difference between the Northwest and the Midwest, and then I say that my hands are cold and go put on a fluffy bathrobe.
Overall, though, we’re pretty well on track for our garden goals for the spring, including...
Eggs!
 |
| Two shell-less eggs fused together |
In case you missed the big news, Bobbie Dylan laid her first egg on February 26th! The other hens soon followed, and now all five of them are laying, collectively giving us three to five eggs every day. Although we’ve had some shell-less eggs here and there (they are enclosed in a tough membrane), for the most part the eggs have been strong-shelled and beautiful. Not to mention absolutely delicious— the orange yolks stand up tall in the pan when you’re frying them, and the whites aren’t runny. Home-grown eggs are the best!
Indoor seed-starting
This year I’m trying to grow tomatoes from seed, which I’ve never done before, and so far they look great! I also have cabbage, basil, peppers, and a couple sunflowers in the seed trays, although they are looking a little less enthusiastic. I’m also starting some zinnias for my mom. We’ve got a florescent shop light and an LED grow light set up on some old shelving in our spare room, with the lights on a timer that allows about 16 hours of light a day. I’ll be planting the cabbages outside soon, but the other plants are warm-weather crops and will be inside for about a month more.
Outdoor seed-starting
I’ve planted one square foot garden with arugula, lettuce, carrots, radishes, kale, and peas. So far nothing’s come up because of the chilly weather, but I can be patient!
Planting trees
Soon after the long-awaited murder of our lawn, the trees we ordered arrived in the mail, and we spent a weekend, plus a few days, frantically trying to get them in the ground. We had pored over scale maps of our yard for a while with little scale drawings of our trees, arranging and rearranging them to figure out the best configuration. At last we marked the spots in our yard with bricks, and set to work.
We had to clear the mulch, cut away the cardboard, chop out the grassy sod, dig a hole, plant the tree, cover it with water and fertilizer, fill the hole back in, surround it with some hardware cloth to keep the rabbits (and hopefully voles) away, and rake the mulch back over the top, so each planting was pretty labor-intensive. I’m glad we only have to do this once!
We got covered in dirt and our backs ached for a week afterward, but we managed to plant seven trees— mulberry, tart cherry, nectarine, two pears, and two hazelnuts— and six shrubs— a red currant, three elderberries, and two false indigo. We’re hoping to keep the pear trees small, using the techniques in Grow a Little Fruit Tree, but we are going to let the other trees and shrubs grow as tall as they like, at least for now. Right now they all just look like sticks, but I’m hoping that will change once the weather warms up.
Have you gotten your garden started yet?
~~~
~~~
No comments:
Post a Comment