What's Growing on.....

 The tomatoes and chillis are coming along.. and need to be potted up this week.  (Hopefully today). Since its the first week in April I also have to start my next batch of seedlings, specifically cucumbers and melons. Its always a bit of a risk because I can't always plant these in the ground in May.  However, I figure I can always repot these while I wait for the weather to get reliably warm. Cucumbers and melons apparently don't like to be repotted (or their roots touched/moved) but I have always had success starting these indoors and repotting once if needed.

This weekend was gorgeous so while I had to do some spring cleaning in the front yard, I couldn't help but start some things in the garden (i.e. the back yard).  One of which was weeding some strawberry runners.  I decided to replant these instead of composting them. I know I won't get a lot of strawberries from such a small area but it will be easy to keep this covered from the birds/deer.  I've been toying with the idea of starting a milk crate strawberry tower as seen here in CaliKim's you tube video:

If I do this I'll need some strawberry starts.... so I figured it doesn't hurt to start collecting them now.

Garlic is coming along.... this year I planted a full square foot garden with garlic. Garlic is such a reliable plant in my garden. I figured why should it have to share space with my onions, which are not always consistent. Garlic also stores really well which is all the more reason to give it prime space in my garden.

These are sunchokes from last years plants... there are so many more left in the ground. I harvested a few so I can start them in other parts of my yard. I grow sunchokes for 3 reasons 1) to help with soil retention on a very steep sloping wild region of my yard (sunchokes have very deep roots). 2) for the nice fall flowers it produces. 3) in the event of a Zombie apocalypse this will be my food source (ok.... I am not completely serious about this.... but given the effect of sunchokes on my GI tract this will probably be the only occasion I actually eat these).

So I noticed last year that the earthworms can work though large amounts of leaves and kitchen scraps in a few weeks. So I have filled these two buckets with all the earthworms I can find with the hope that by the time I need to plant my tomatoes on Mothers day I have a good amount of vermicompost for them. Lets hope :)

This is my Shiro plum tree. Last year we finally saw our first ripe plums so this year we are hoping for more. I fertilized and mulched this tree this weekend. Now I am just waiting with the deer/bird netting ready for when the fruit start to appear.

Time to plant the onions!!! I received my Dixondale Farms onion order yesterday. This year I ordered all three of their long day red onions (red river, red zeppelin, and redwing) with the hopes of doing some side by side grow testing to see which one performs the best in my area. The fourth type of onion I ordered were walla walla onions which really do very well for me.

Anyway thats it for now... hopefully the weather stays warm. The birds seem to think that the warm weather is here to stay and I'm hoping they are right.