HOLY GARDEN-TASTIC-STRAVAGANZA-YAHOO WEEKEND!

Wow, where to start? Lately I always seem to lead in with a statement about the weather. This has not been on purpose. Until now. To be fair, weather is kind of a huge thing for us gardeners. If our soil is depleted of nutrients, we can add some compost and fertilizer. There are many other things like this that we can somewhat control. The weather on a day to day basis is not one of those things. Oh sure, you can grow in a greenhouse but I don't have one of those damn it. Though, if you want to donate one or build me one I would not turn that down. I digress. Back to weather. I'm just going to keep it real for everyone. Shit's been pretty cold in Michigan, yo. I mean, yeah, we've had a few 70 degree days. But overall? The winter has been followed up by a really sluggish spring. Tulips are slow to grow let alone bloom. I imagine the people with the Tulip Festival in Holland, Michigan are freaking out a bit considering that is coming up in a week or so. A large portion of the Great Lakes still have ice covering them. And it's going to be May this week.

The point of all this is to say gardening has been slow going thus far. But as of a few days ago my gardening calendar EXPLODED. It was blowin' up, as the kids say. I had already scheduled this weekend to enlist my dad's help in building some raised bed boxes for my front yard. And then I got a message from Nicole, a nice woman at the Ingham County Land Bank Garden Program, that my spring crop vegetable starts were in. And then I got a message from a good man named John (through the same program) that my raspberry and strawberry plants that I had ordered were in. Hot damn. So my weekend was committed to gardening (minus the Lugnuts minor league baseball game I attended Friday night). What choice did I have?

We will start with the cute. My kids love digging in the dirt with me. Jack will now spend a good chunk of his time outside digging in the garden. And I love it.

And so we move from one kind of young sprouts to another. 

Radish sprouts! Even these that tend to be pretty cold tolerant have been slow to take off. 

And here we have pea sprouts. I should have gotten new pictures of these because since the few days since this has been taken there has been a real surge in the number of pea sprouts and their rate of growth. 

The garlic bed is looking quite right

Oh hey look. Another cute pic made it in here. Filling some trucks up with dirt. 

Spinach sprout. 

So this is where I am so far. Things have been starting to come on. And then my spring batch of starts came in. And this is what they look like.

What we have here are leeks, storage onions, red onions, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage (red and green), and a metric shit ton of Brussels sprouts. 64 of them to be exact. I like Brussels sprouts. What of it? 

Those starts are currently being hardened off. If you are not familiar with hardening off, it is the process of slowing getting sprouts who have spent their lives inside, used to the elements and temperatures outside. This takes 5-7 days generally. Each subsequent day, you leave them out a little bit longer. Moving on...

Time to plant some raspberries! I must admit, the fruit sector of gardening intimidates me a bit. I am not familiar with it in terms of hands on experience. I've read up on it and studied it a fair bit but as the saying goes, there is no substitute for experience. I already have planted 4 Mammoth Red Raspberries along a bed. This weekend I also planted Anne raspberry canes and Bristol black raspberries. But even before I planted them, my wife and I worked on taking down a chain link fence and also clearing out some of the most stubborn grape vines I've ever met. Which is, you know, presumably not a lot.

Anne raspberry canes in their new home. 

Bristol raspberry canes. 

After I had planted out the raspberries and took a lunch break, I went back out to plant the leeks and onions. The following are some pictures of their placements.

Today (Sunday) brought a new gardening day. A day in which the strawberries would need to be planted. But first, we would need to build their new homes. Raised bed boxes.

Jack enjoyed playing in them

Clearly

 Also my wife, Maggie, took some shots of me while I was filling the boxes with topsoil. Because, you know, chicks love a dude who can fill a box. HEY-O! (I apologize for the inappropriateness but then again, this is my blog and that is my sense of humor)

And the finished product. Well, the two finished products. The other boxes will get dirt in them in due time. But my main concern was getting those two boxes finished so I could get the strawberries in. 

I apologize for not having pictures of the strawberries finally planted. I blanked out on that one and now it's almost 10:00pm. But, to be fair, there isn't much to look at other than the crowns of the strawberries poking up from the dirt.

Also not to be lost is the fact that I planted out a second round of seeds for spinach, lettuce, carrots and mini purple bulbing onions.

 So there it is. A weekend of work. It seems like so little when put down in this blog but has been much longer and more work than I can relate in words. I am hoping that it will be worth it.

We Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig In Our Garden the Whole Day Through

What a day! Earlier in the week I set up a work day for our MLK Community Garden. Two of our members confirmed and they both brought a tiller. Now, normally, I am not a proponent of tilling a garden as it tends to disrupt the soils natural structure. I made an exception for this particular site. It hadn't been tended to and the weeding would have been pretty immense. So with that being said, on with the tilling!

With the help of garden members, we also cleaned and organized the three bin compost system. Underneath a lot of vines and fibrous material there was actually a lot of nicely broken down compost. Always a nice find.

During the 2.5 hours that we were working out there, we had some visitors. A few neighborhood kids wanted to come over and see what we were doing. A few of my favorite quotes, "Wow this place sure looks a lot different than it did before you got here." And, "My grandma says we are going to have a garden in our yard! I gotta go talk to her about what we are going to plant!" Always great to see young kids interested in gardening. Another visitor was a man who, upon walking by, wanted to talk to me about possibly getting a plot to garden. After giving him my contact information and explaining the basic garden rules and etiquette, he took the information and said he'd be in touch. We shall see but even if I don't hear from him, it feels good to know that our hard work is being noticed and looks good enough to attract other people's interest.

After the ground was worked, I proceeded to put in my crops. I was also able to share some of my onion sprouts with the other members. Behold! A bunch of pictures of dirt!!

Row of potatoes

A double row of onions

Another shot of the onions since they are probably the most visually appealing thing here

My plots at the garden

Another angle. 

Aside from the onions and potatoes, I also planted a double row of dwarf peas, Scarlet carrot, Chantenay carrots, Danver carrots, Paris Market carrots, Tricolor radishes, French Breakfast radishes, Champion radishes, Bloomsdale spinach, Emu spinach, Simpson lettuce, Grand Rapids Lettuce and Flame lettuce. Whew!

One thing I am in the process of doing is getting a water catchment system on site because as of right now, there is no source of water supply. This means that we have to bring in our own water. I happened to bring about 2.5 gallons of water yesterday and it wasn't even enough to wet and water all of my seeds, let alone how much more water these plants will need while growing. At this point, getting that water supply on site is the single most important project to the community garden site for this year.

After I completed my work at the garden, I came home and put my boy down for nap and then got to work on my own garden. I planted much of the same stuff in my garden that I did at the community garden minus the peas, spinach and radishes which were already planted a few days ago.

Double row of onions next to the garlic

Second double row of onions that form an L box around the garlic. Speaking of the garlic, it is looking really good so far. 

Potatoes

Carrots

More onions between rows of radishes. The radishes will be ready to harvest in a mere 30 days. Just around the time the onions will start to grow and need more space, the radishes will be harvested. 

More onions. Seriously... I had a lot of onion sprouts. 

A row of Paris Market carrots and a block of salad lettuce mix. 

A hard days work but it felt really good to get so much planted.

A few notes:

• Onions sprouts are really, really tedious to plant. Especially when you have 100+ of them. Hopefully it will be worth it. 
• I feel like I am a little behind things this year. Normally I would have already had my tomatoes started. I am just going to be starting them today. Part of this may be the weather thus far. 
• Speaking of the weather, it's been absolutely gorgeous. 60's and even flirting with 70's for a day or two. Which makes it all the more depressing to see 1-3 inches of snow in the forecast on Monday night into Tuesday morning. I'm a bit worried what that will do to things I have planted. Now, granted, the only reason I planted those crops this early is because they are all at least semi-cold hardy. This means they can generally take a light frost and survive. But, 1-3 inches of snow is a bit more than a light frost. Grrrrrr
• I really enjoyed working with others in the garden. I always love it when I get to work along side my wife and I really enjoyed working with new people as well. 

That is it for me. As always, if you have any questions for me during this busy gardening time, feel free to ask! 

It Has Begun

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to not only watch an afternoon baseball game but to also get in a good couple hours of garden/yard work with my wife and boy. A big project was clearing out and taking down as many of the vines that grow on the fences surrounding our back yard. We were able to fill up about 8 lawn bags worth of vines and debris. No matter how much you try to clear them out, they keep coming back so each year involves cutting back and yanking out of as much as we can.

I was able to get 3 raspberry plants in the ground as well. I ordered Mammoth Red Raspberries over the winter. They were shipped out a bit earlier than I had anticipated so they had an extended stay in my refrigerator. It was nice to be able to work the soil, finally. I am really hoping these raspberries take and mature. Time will tell.

My bulbs that I planted this past fall are starting to make their presence known by pushing their way through the early spring soil. One even has a small, colorful bud on it already. Just as a reminder of what I ordered and planted: Drumstick Allium, Royal Tulip, Wildflower bulb mix, Border Daffodils, Mountain Bells Mixture, and Wood Hyacinths mix. You can see their beginning growth below.

I was also able to get some actual seeds into the ground in my yard. Below is a series of pictures showing where things are planted. It is just dirt right now but it is exciting to know that I have seeds out there just waiting to come alive.

This is a row of spinach, two different kinds. Foreground is a smooth leaf Emu Spinach from Johnny's Selected Seeds. Planted further back (top of screen) is Bloomsdale long standing crinkled leaf spinach

My trusty homemade pea trellis. This may be it's last year. Under it I planted two rows of Sugar Snap peas (same as I had growing on it last year). In three double rows in front of it, I have planted Little Marvel (Dwarf) peas. They grow to only 18 inches and can be self supporting, especially when allowed to grow up and against each other (hence the double rows). I am trying these out to see if I can maximize my pea harvest without as much need for trellising. We shall see

Here I have four rows of radish seeds planted. In the first row closest to us is a French Breakfast radish. The second row is Champion Radish. The back two rows are small tri-colored Easter Egg radishes. 

This is my wildflower "bed." Really, it is just one part of my front lawn that has been used to grow flowers. I raked back all of the left over debris and planted down a wildflower mix, some Poppy double mixed seeds and a tall mix of Rocket Larkspur. I'll continue to plant out flower seeds as the season calls for it.

Not bad for a couple hours work. More work will surely follow as it warms up. I'm looking forward to it. I hope you are as well.