What Did You Do In The Garden?

[ducks4you]

More hotbed information:
http://makinghistorynow.com/2014/02/from-the-garden-loading-the-hotbed/
http://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/garden/how-americans-gardened-260-years-ago
http://www.pennsburymanor.org/the-country-life-beating-the-winter-cold/
http://www.pennsburymanor.org/the-country-life-its-harvest-time-right/

About ready to start my seedlings and about ready to finish prepping my hotbed experiment. NOW, I just need to get a new battery for my camera.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I went out in the snow and cut some flower stalks down, raked SNOW out of my boxes where I plan to plant lettuce and other greens and covered with plastic to start warming. It is not froze. Bought some plastic for the sawhorse greenhouses, ordered 40 Whopper strawberry plants from Gurneys, having a sale of $19.99 for 40. Ordered some seeds from Baker Creek, out of collards, parsley, dill and basil. Thinking about ordering some asparagus plants. Today, I looked like this picture.

 

[ducks4you]

I should start a thread, "What DId You Do On Your 5 acres Today?"
I just finished cleaning up the dead 2016 burdock. The first attack was last summer, and I hired help to chop down and pile up and burn all of the colonies of the blasted, bloody stuff in all but the South Pasture. ToDAY I finished a month long attack ON the South Pasture. I pulled up all of the dead burdock that was still in the ground. Then I peeled my eyes for the handfuls of burrs left on the ground. I put both in my large wheelbarrow, breaking them into manageable pieces to burn. Then I dumped them by my firepit. ToDAY I collected 8 wheelbarrows full. The total is closer to 20 wheelbarrows full, but there is probably only 1/2 a wheelbarrow left and they are directly under the 30 ft. pine trees. The ponies got to gorge on the South Pasture...for about 2 hours. They come running...maybe meandering for their grain, so it was easy to get them off of it. Gotta be careful of grass founder in the Spring, ya know.
The NEXT step is to use vegetation killer on the sprouted 2nd year burdock. THAT starts later this week. It was WAAAYYYYY too windy to spray today. A decent attack on THAT should make a BIIIIGGGGG difference. After that, I just need to hit the 1st year burdock sprouts.
I would have RATHER planted my potatoes today....

 

[seedcorn]

Saturday, weeded my butterfly garden. Ended up digging the whole thing up as crab grass had runners everywhere. Sunday I had muscles screaming at me that I didn't know I had. Getting old is tough....

Will my sprouted asaitic lillies still bloom? Any thoughts?

 

[ninnymary]

@seedcorn , is that your garden in your avatar? I don't think I've ever seen pictures of your garden. If those asiatic lilies have sprouted, they're alive. Why do you think they won't bloom? Did you get a freeze or snow storm?

Mary

 

[seedcorn]

Yes, strawed area is vegetable garden. In front (lower left corner) is the butterfly garden-in memory of my Dad's Mom and my Mom who loved butterflies.

They are sprouted, but lost roots when I transplanted. Something's get mad when you mess with them and don't bloom. To get the crab grass out, I had no choice but to dig and filter roots out. Some were VERY healthy roots.

 

[ducks4you]

It won't hurt them to not bloom this year. As long as you get healthy leaves for strength, they WILL bloom next year. BUT, I think you will get blooms this year. We have had some gnarly Springs, where we have leaving out and flowers on fruit trees, including my grapes, and THEN an unexpected hard freeze. A few years ago I was convinced that the grape crop was a goner, bc all of the leaves were freezer burned, and then it came back. MY plants are telling me that the recent highs in the 70's and Saturday high of 80 degrees F are a little bit of an anomoly and we should expect the temperatures to dip down in the next few weeks before they level out to the averages. I sometimes pull out iris bulbs when weeding and after sticking them in pocket I replant somewhere else. The first year, no flowers, but then they multiply, explode and beg to be divided a few years down the road.
Asiatic lilies are the natural lily color. People sometimes buy a different color and three years later they come up "tiger lilies" and the owner wonders what happened.
JUST make sure that when you plant them you add compost and hand mix it with native soil. I have learned to amend my soil with vegetables and flowers so that their roots have an easy time. I will take pictures of this year's radishes so that you can see the huge root system bc of the soil, which you will NOT see in soil that hasn't been amended, which is what I USED to plant in. Even the soil that I double dug out of my hotbed/coldbed has hardened up like clay, though it is NOT clay, and that is why I dumped it where my one horse has been pawing at his tie spot. You can find a use for ANYTHING...even weeds I suppose. I try to burn my weeds and dump the soil. When I cleaned out my flycatcher jugs last month I buried the fly bodies as deep as possible, then dumped the ashes from my fire pit on top so it wouldn't stink. It will all decompose, like Mozart.

 

[seedcorn]

If they don't bloom this year, I would have tossed some of them. I now have WAY more than I want since they multiply like weeds...

 

[Beekissed]

Removed several wheelbarrows full of composted chicken litter from the coop and placed in the garden, around perennials, side dressed the new peas and the flower rows. Then placed some on the prepped lettuce beds.

Planted another seedling tray of lettuce, broccoli, flowers, carrots and pak choy.

Removed a thousand water sprouts from the apple trees.

 

[Collector]

Sunday we planted 4 apple trees, 2 multi variety plum trees, and 10 more June bearing raspberry bushes. Evenings after work we have been pruning our existing fruit trees. Rain or not it needs to get done.