Gardening Mania Continues

Guayo checking out the roses

shallots, Chinese cabbage red cabbage

Finally warmth!  After two weeks of temperatures fluctuating madly, going from 46 to 28 degrees at night, forecasts show a steady warming trend and none too soon.  The seedlings have about had it being indoors and outdoors, back and forth, night after night. Plus they took a beating this past weekend as we were out of town for two days and the temp dropped to 28.  The green beans, a couple tomato plants and a couple of poblano pepper plants aren't looking so great, but  hopefully with continued care and warmth, they will come back.

row of raised beds

     So now is the weekend for getting everything in the ground or in pots.  Purchased the final (hopefully) 30 cubic feet of  organic garden soil yesterday afternoon, and today will disburse it.  Roy and I (mostly Roy) built a wonderful 4 1/2 x 4 1/2 raised bed which will be filled with strawberries; plus have 12 more pots to fill and plant with various items....cucumbers being the first, edamame, chervil, tarragon, wheat grass (for smoothies), poblanos, Big Jim peppers, and Asian Greens. Also putting the jalapenos, and red, yellow, and green bell peppers into the ground, along with basil and cilantro. The tomatoes are already in buckets as are a few of the poblanos.  The rest--delicata squash, sweet pumpkin squash, more beets, etc. will be disbursed where I can find or make a place for them.  It's going to be a full and diverse garden and I hope it goes crazy so we can preserve it and use the abundance all winter.

peas and columbine in pots

     And I can't wait to start harvesting the greens for fresh crisp salads.  There's nothing like going outside, cutting some greens and herbs, picking a tomato and cucumber, and coming inside and making a wonderful salad with the bounty from your garden.  We've already been able to sample some of the upcoming deliciousness---partaking in the rich bursting flavor of cherry tomatoes a week ago, first ones to come on the bushes and ripen.  There are more there and can't wait to see them turn red.  Even have a pretty good sized yellow bell pepper on one of the plants. That's the joy of gardening.  This year it won't pay off---setting up organic soil and amendments and putting together raised beds and planters is not cheap. But now that it's in place (or almost complete) it will be a perpetual joy from season to season, and I'm sure will more than pay for itself by next year.

Come on basil!!  Pesto in the raw.

    Checking out our  new trees yesterday, found that the Red Bartlett Pear has pears all over it!  This was a huge and wonderful surprise. The nectarine had a lot of blossoms, but don't think we'll get anything off of it this year.  The plum and apple trees showed great buds, but not seeing any fruit yet, so hope the late frost didn't get them. Last year we had a bumper crop of both, but only got to take advantage of the apples (apple slices, apple sauce, apple butter, spiced apple slices, etc) as we were moving in and renovating when the plums ripened, so didn't have time to deal with them. The javelina were delighted....fresh fruit snacks each and every day for several weeks, were distributed on a daily basis all over the ground!  Hopefully this year they can be harvested and dried for prunes and made into plum jelly, plum sauce.....hmmmm, plum wine???
     The thing we have to watch is water usage.  To try to offset that cost, Roy has begun putting together our first rain barrel to be used as a catch basin for rain runoff.  Did you know (do I sound like a game show host?) that 1" of rain on a 1000 square foot roof produces 600 gallons of water?  That's a lot of free watering if it can be caught and contained. We are not so presumptuous as to think we will be catching that much, but we're shooting for 5--55 gallon barrels total before the end of summer. Hopefully before monsoons.  So 275 gallons of free water seems pretty good to us. Wish us luck is getting it set up, and in getting some rain to fill them.  It may be a dry summer...not sure how the weather patterns are going to work out. Will keep you apprised.
     In our quest for some self-sufficiency and a bit of relief from the ever rising costs at the grocery store (case in point...the protein powder I have used for 2 1/2 years just went up $10 a bag!!!!) we are still considering getting 4-5 laying hens. Spoke to 3 of our neighbors, and as long as we share any over-abundance or meals with them, they have no objections. So don't be surprised if in an upcoming blog you see us building a chicken coop!!!