Spring Garden

It is green around here if you look up. The Birch trees have leafed out and are a bright spring green. The ground is still mostly brown with tufts of green grass here and there. The Iris, Delphinium, Columbine, and Strawberries are up as is the clover in the garden and the perennial poppies. The first plants to bloom around here are the poppies, although the newspaper shows a picture of the pulsatilla wildflower each year as the first flower to bloom locally. I guess my pulsatilla are not as content as my poppies - I should relocate them someday. The chives are also up, although I've been snipping them daily so I haven't given them much chance, can't help myself - fresh chives! I'm beginning to think the rhubarb kicked the bucket. That is what I get for transplanting it in the fall and burying dead chickens under it - which the dog dug up before the ground froze solid and continued to dig all the snow away from it throughout the winter....extra rhubarb divisions anyone?

As far as vegetables that I've planted this year go, the peas, carrots, radishes and beets are all up and growing. I've been planting onions and leek the last two days and have more starts than I have room for. I'm tempted to just keep planting them and then figure something else out as needed, but I have soooooo many broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage starts to put out, and then there are the greens, kale and chard and then there's the corn and squash and beans, edamame and outdoor tomatoes...ah so many things to plant and never enough room! 

Potatoes have been in the ground for a week. We've sowed rutabaga and turnip seed. Tomatoes are in the greenhouse. Eggplant, peppers and cucumbers are going into pots to be placed into the second greenhouse, but I'm not in a hurry to move them out as they'll be happier in the house for the next couple weeks. Next on the list for planting are some herbs that are rootbound in their small pots, they'll be going into raised and covered boxes, so should be fine. I've been hardening most the starts off for the last couple weeks by moving them outside during the day and back in for nights. I am going to wait a week or so before I put out the outdoor tomatoes, and any other starts that won't be in covered beds. So I think we'll switch to building some beds and filling them with soil this week. Make some room for beans, celery and squash.

Hopefully we don't have a super hot dry June, or I'll be regretting the size of the garden quickly enough - unless we get organized enough to install a drip irrigation system. Tomorrow we are headed over to friends for the day to help put up fencing for pigs, one of which will be ours this fall - I'll take some pictures of our future pork, mmm...cute piggy goodness.