Five, Six, Pick Up Sticks
Last Friday morning Mr Chiots and I signed the papers and closed on the empty lot next door. It’s been for sale several times while we’ve lived here, but it’s always been way out of our budget, especially since we were focusing on paying off our mortgage as soon as we could. We paid off the mortgage last fall and we’ve been saving up our extra cash for our dream of purchasing some acreage in a more rural location. The lots on both sides of us are for sale, but both were priced much higher than we were willing to pay for quarter acre lots. Last month we noticed that the lot below us had dropped in price by half and decided it was a price we were willing to pay. We called, made an offer and they accepted it.
With this purchase we have doubled the size of our lot from a quarter to a half of an acre. This is going to be a HUGE bonus for my gardening! We can clear off the front of the lot and I can have a nice sized full sun gardening area, something I’m severely lacking. When we have it all cleared I should have a few thousand square feet of gardening space for vegetables and a thousand square feet or so for an orchard. The back half of the lot is a grove of maple trees, which we’ll keep so we can tap them each spring.
This weekend we spent some time clearing off the saplings. There are a few huge trees that will need to be taken down by professionals, but most of the trees we’ll be able to remove ourselves. I won’t be able to plant anything this year, because we’ll still be digging up tree roots and hopefully planting cover crops to improve the soil. Lucky for us the lot has never really had anything done to it so the soil shouldn’t be too bad.
I spent a long time this weekend picking up the saplings after Mr Chiots cut them down, carrying them to the back of the lot, and piling them up for future use. We will most likely use a lot of these saplings for fencing, plant supports and I may even get creative and make a bench or an arbor out of them. Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us this gardening season!
How big is your garden?
Filed under Miscellaneous | Comments (29)Quote of the Day: Ralph Waldo Emmerson
For flowers that bloom about our feet;
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee!
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
I’m so thankful that I’m starting to see color in the garden again.
What are you thankful for today?
Filed under Quote | Comments (10)The First Spring Salad
On Thursday, when I was working outside, I harvested the first of the spinach that I overwintered in my hoop houses. It’s coming to life quite nicely this spring.
The leaves on the ‘Giant Winter’ that survived were huge. The leaves on the ‘Catalina’ were smaller, but there were more of them and the plants dealt with the cold best of the 2 varieties I planted.
I also harvested some dandelion and bitter cress greens to mix in with the spinach. We topped these lovely greens with: pastured smoked bacon, organic pastured eggs, caramelized organic onions, local organic raw milk blue cheese, and a maple vinaigrette made with some of our very own maple syrup.
It made for the perfect dinner, quick to make and delicious to eat! I’m looking forward to salad season, there’s definitely something cleansing about eating salads in the spring. It seems our bodies crave the greens and all the vitamins they provide after the long winter.
What’s your favorite salad green? Are you harvesting any from your garden yet?
Filed under Edible, Spinach | Comments (18)Friday Favorite: Spring Cleanup
There’s something especially exhilarating about spring cleanup in the garden. I think it has something to do with us Northerners being cooped up in our houses for the long dark months of winter. When we have a few nice warm sunny days, spring cleanup begins in the garden. I always wait until I know really hard freezes are over, as I’d hate to uncover my perennials only to have them freeze again on a cold night.
Yesterday was perfect, sun, blue skies, high around 60 – simply perfect. I spent the morning inside working and then made my way outside around 1 when it had warmed up and the sun was high in the sky. It sure was nice to feel the sun on my back as I cleared the leaves out of the flowerbeds, unwrapped the hydrangeas and weeded the raised beds.
I especially love peeling back the leaves that mulched the beds throughout the winter and seeing the soil teeming with life. I saw tons of spiders, worms, beetles, wooly bears, caterpillars, grubs and all sorts of creepy crawlies. I’m happy to see each and every one of them, including those giant wolf spiders, because I know each and every one of them, whether good or bad, plays an important role in my garden.
What’s your favorite garden chore in the spring?
Filed under Seasons, Weather | Comments (6)The First Tomato of 2011
I haven’t even begun to start most of my summer garden seeds yet. I do have the seedling area filled with onions, leeks, and celery. I start those very early in January so they’re ready to move outside when it’s time to start the peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage and other seeds. A week ago I started 5 seeds for ‘Sub-Arctic’ tomato. I like to start these early since they don’t seem to mind the cold weather.
I used to start my tomatoes super early, but last year I noticed that the ones I had spent hours carrying in and out of the basement, repotting and coddling didn’t fruit any faster than the ones that germinated in the soil outside when the time was right. My first tomato harvest was actually a volunteer that started on the front hillside. This year I’m going to be starting my tomatoes a little later than usual, that way I’ll spend less time repotting them and I can spend more time working in the garden.
I will be doing some experimenting with one variety of tomatoes. I’ll start a few seeds here in the next few days, a few in a couple weeks when I start all my tomatoes and I’ll direct sow a few seeds in the garden (all the same variety). It should be interesting to see how each one grows and produces. If the direct sown seeds do just as well I’ll plant all of my tomatoes that way in the future, that will sure save a lot of time and effort!
Are you doing anything differently this year in your edible garden? Have you started any of your tomato seeds?
Filed under Seed Sowing | Comments (23)