So, it's that time again ...
My chard came back. I sautéed some of the leaves in bacon fat. So delicious. They tasted bacon-y without all the work of chopping up and cooking bacon. They're young enough that the ribs were easy to eat - I just tossed the leaves in without any dismembering. I was warned that they would go to seed quickly or wouldn't taste as good, but I'm not finding that.
My garlic is going gangbusters, and I'm a little chagrined as I realize it is going to significantly reduce the amount of space I have for summer crops.
I planted some lettuce. I actually think there may have been some baby lettuce coming back, but I thought they were weeds ... oops.
Weirdly, I have lots of carrots growing now from the seeds I planted last fall. I haven't pulled any yet to check them out.
I planted buckwheat seeds as a cover crop last season, but they never sprouted. Of course, they're sprouting now ... and not just where I planted them. They have another few weeks before I mulch them in.
My strawberry plants came back and seem quite happy. I added a third plant because I hear that strawberries stop fruiting well after the first 2 years or so.
My blueberry bush is filled with blossoms, which I think will all become blueberries. Last season, I got maybe 10 blueberries all summer. But it was still very young. This is exciting!
And I trimmed down my roses last weekend, down to the ground in some cases. It was nice to get them before they turned into death traps. But before I did so, I found a visitor:
I mixed a bag of compost into my veggie beds a couple of weeks ago, and last night we finally turned on the sprinkler/drip system, so everyone should be getting plenty of water now. I have watered with the hose a few times, but not regularly.
I also "built" chickenwire cages for my arbor vitae. They're about 5', and the lowest foot is brown from dog pee. Yuck. I'm hoping the cages will dissuade the dogs from those spots. Unfortunately I know they'll just migrate to our bigger trees, but at least they're well established? I wonder if I could do something to train my male dogs not to pee on live things. Sigh.
In the front yard, my tulips came back again. I didn't even plant them - they are still there from the previous owner, so they've been coming up without maintenance for at least 14 years now. I've never divided them. Granted, there are fewer than there used to be. Other than the tulips, the front flower bed is a mess - I tried to mitigate weeds with sedum, but it just looks gross, and it's hard to weed. My new plan is to kill off everything and start from scratch with felt, mulch, and a few flowering bushes (thinking a couple of small hydrangeas and some other thing in front of them ...) I may or may not transplant some of the tulip bulbs to the front as
@Kimmyt suggested. They're beautiful and make me happy every spring, but I'm not sure how readily they'll find a hole in the felt, or how much that will hurt my plan of using felt as a weed barrier. Seems like weeds make their way through everything eventually and destroy the felt within a couple of years, anyway.
There's currently a sprayer for the flower bed, which I plan to replace with drips to each individual bush, which I'm told will make it *slightly* less of a weed attractant.
