the berries and asparagus get a little attention

The past couple days I have been working on weeding, fertilizing and mulching the raspberry canes, blueberry bushes and the asparagus.  The raspberry canes were transplants that were moved from the edge of the grove to a new spot where hopefully they can be managed to grow bigger berries.  Our are black raspberry canes that start out red and turn black when ripe.  Quite a few of the transplanted canes are getting leaves on them so I am hoping that most of them made it thru the winter.

The asparagus is some that we started from seed last winter and planted outside when the ground warmed up.  We dug a trench and planted the plants in the bottom of it and gradually  added soil to the trench as the plants got taller.  This spring there are one or more spears popping up by nearly every plant.  There were a couple of plants that didn't make it through the summer so we had a couple gaps in the spacing.  I was hoping that they might come back this spring so we will watch for them and if they don't come perhaps replace them with new plants.  I did start more seeds this winter again in case there was a failure over winter.  Now the decision will be whether to share the new plants or start another row.

The blueberries have been a struggle.  We planted them in 2011.  Six plants, two each of three varieties.  We did not plan ahead for them and prepare a spot with acidic soil and so I have been trying to amend the soil around them.  Last year they did not grow and looked sickly, kind of yellow.  We did several things hoping to have both quick and long term changes in the pH.  I was kind of afraid that they might not come up this year.  This year I purchased a pH meter and so far my readings suggest that my blueberry soil is still too alkaline.  All of the plants seem to have come up.  Two of the varieties are doing better than the third.  They are yellow in color but getting little leaves on them so I am going to do a little more research and see if I can find out if that is normal.

I did not get the rhubarb weeded but that is on my list for next week.  This weekend I will be gone watching my youngest receive her Master's Degree in Interior Architecture and Product Design at Kansas State.

As an update the greenhouse is way too warm so once I get back the plants in there are going in the ground.  There is the possibility of rain so I am hoping that if it is cloudy it will stay cooler in there. I am currently trying to get an inventory of the transplants that I have so that I can work on my garden plan while riding in the car.

All of the orchard trees are getting bigger buds and little leaves.  One of the plums has tiny white flowers coming.  The other plum has two different types of wood so I am not sure if that is the way that it is supposed to grow or if there are suckers coming from below the graft.  More research needed...

spring is in the air...

It felt like summer today.  The high was recorded at 79 degrees and it is kind of looking like we might get a little rain tonight.  It felt good to get outside and do a little  preparation work in the portager.  I worked up the new soil in the bed that was replaced last fall and the center bed.  Both need a couple more inches of compost to fill them up to the top and recharge the soil.

So I headed over to check out the compost pile.  The compost is not fully decomposed yet but it is close so I shoveled off a few wheelbarrows-full and started a new pile.  If it doesn't rain tonight I will water it tomorrow.  I think that turning the pile will encourage it to decompose faster and hopefully be ready to add to the garden boxes before it is time to plant those boxes.

Some of the perimeter boxes will need more soil or compost to top them off as well.  A decision needs to be made as to whether to plant the three long boxes that need to be replaced or rebuild them and then plant them.  Once there is stuff growing it is pretty much fall before any building can be done.  

A quick peek in the box where I planted the garlic last fall shows that nothing is happening yet.  If no rain tonight perhaps I will give that a shot of water tomorrow.  There is no activity yet in the strawberry tower yet so that will get a shot of water tomorrow also.

Next I moved to the greenhouse and watered all of the plants on the tables and planted seeds for transplants.  Quite a bit of the seeds planted last weekend are up and so I moved most of them off the heat mat to make room for today's plantings: two kinds of cucumbers, both a pickling and a slicing, along with two summer squashes, a yellow and a zucchini, two winter squashes, an acorn and a butternut, and the pumpkins.

These, along with the melons planted last week and the sweet corn will be going into the new planting area which still needs to be readied.  It was still pretty wet a couple days ago but once it is dry we will till it and lay out the beds. I would like part of the garden to be done in raised rows.  I am thinking that if I install a few every year that it would be manageable and allow for the layout to develop over the course of time.

To do list for tomorrow:

set up the bird bath
water the new pear tree
water the garlic
water the strawberry tower
water the new compost pile
work up the soil in one or two perimeter beds
check the field for moisture
move more composting manure  

an afternoon in the greenhouse

After the past few days of cloudy, snowy weather it was nice to get a little sunshine therapy in the greenhouse.  I had on my to do list for this weekend to transplant the rest of the tomatoes into bigger cups and to get the melon seeds started.

Nikole selected the tomato seeds and this year we are growing an heirloom, a large red indeterminate, a cherry tomato and a paste tomato, so if all goes well we should have a nice selection of tomatoes.  We planted some early and are hoping that they can be in pots and ready to flower by the time it is warm enough to set them outside.  We planted some later that will go into the garden as a transplant.  We have extra seedlings which should allow us to have more tomatoes for canning or for sale as plants or as produce.  Saw an online article about a new way to plant tomatoes and I think i will give it a try as an experiment.  A bucket or waste basket with holes drilled in the bottom and around the sides about 10 inches up is placed in a hole in the garden with the top row of holes just above the soil line.  Five tomato plants are planted around the bucket.  A cylinder of fencing is then placed around the tomato plants as a tomato cage.  In the bucket goes a couple shovelfuls of compost and the bucket is filled up every couple days with water.  I am picturing this as a constant supply of compost tea.  I think I will plant five more of the same variety conventionally and compare the two groups as far as yield, taste, disease resistance.  I think if I have a couple of marked containers for harvest it should be easy to keep records.

Now that we have extra space it will be fun to try our hand at melons.  This year Nikole selected a watermelon and a cantaloupe.  She was thinking that we still had seeds from last year for a honeydew melon that we never used but when I found the seeds it was a muskmelon.  We also had a seed packet that was not dated from Burgess that was for another cantaloupe variety.  I think that might have been a freebie that they sent with something my mom may have ordered.  I planted them all and if they all come we may have lots of cantaloupe seedlings.  The seed packet directions suggest two ways of planting melons and I am going to try them both as an experiment and see which works better and makes better use of the available space.  One method is more of a hill type arrangement and the other is a row arrangement. 

The basil, thyme and kohlrabi that was planted on the 12th are sprouting.  The parsley, rosemary and dill have not yet.  Next weekend it will be time to start the squashes...

And as an update--the replacement pear tree arrived today.  I have not unwrapped it yet but I did shovel around last years tree and dug it up.  The ground is thawed down at least a foot and it was easy to dig but the soil is pretty wet so I decided to allow the soil to dry out a little bit and plant it tomorrow when it is supposed to be 50 degrees out.  Then tonight I hear that there is a chance of rain or snow during the night.  Keeping my fingers crossed that it holds off until I get the tree in the ground.

flower and veggie seed update

 A while back I started some flower seeds in the greenhouse which are intended to go into the summer gardens both here and at Nikole's.  I planted Marigolds, Bee Balm and Impatiens.  It has now been six weeks since they were planted.  The Bee Balm have not germinated at all.  I planted a second smaller group with the remaining seeds and they have not come up either.  In a little online research it turns out that some Bee Balm seeds benefit from a moist chill so I am back out to the greenhouse to bring in the Bee Balm seeds to refrigerate.  There were a couple tiny seedlings that had started so I transplanted them into cups before sticking the others in the fridge.

The marigolds germinated but not well.  I planted only one seed per cell so some cells did not germinate.Two weeks ago when they were four weeks from the date they were planted I transplanted them into cups.  Here they are today.  They have multiple leaves and sturdy stems.  I think that we have about 24 plants.

These are the Impatiens.  There was a little mishap with the planting of these.  The little dish that I had transferred the seeds into got jostled and the seeds flew, landing on a thin layer of seed starting mix.  I spread the seeds and mix over the filled but not yet planted cells, planning to thin/replant when they came up.  We actually got a fair number of seeds to germinate and when they were still pretty small they were separated to one plant per cell.

 Here is one of the tomato seedlings from the first group planted...

Brandywiue tomato

and the asparagus...

and the kohlrabi...

This weekend I will be starting more seeds for the summer garden and hope to have more updates on seeds that have been started.