Sunshine... How We Love Thee and Oh How We Need Thee!

Our garden is starting to look like a garden again, and this makes me very happy! Due to the cold weather we were having, the seeds we planted a while back all went dormant just after they sprouted. They just sat there for weeks waiting for the sun to show up. Judging by the sudden appearance of shorts and flip flops this week, I'd say we were all ready and waiting for those warm, golden rays.


Our mason bee haven

Our mason bees were waiting too. Now they're happily buzzing about our garden, going in and out of their house, and building their little mud nests. I'll have to convince Michael to write a post explaining all about the interesting factoids he recently learned about mason bees.... I can't possibly relay the information with the level of clarity and accuracy that he can.


This is the box that the chickens got
into. Almost time to start thinning
those radishes in the front.
 

Unfortunately the chickens dug up our sunflower sprouts and a portion of our lettuce/arugula/spinach patch. We've since covered just about everything with bird netting and are hoping this will do the trick.

The lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and brussels that we started indoors spent several days basking in the sun this week. Once we were convinced that they had successfully acclimated to the outdoor temperatures, we planted a whole bed of the brassicas and two rows of lettuce beside our asparagus patch.



I know it sounds a little morbid, but
these potato trenches kind of look
like baby graves.

I dug several trenches in one of our backyard beds and planted four varieties of seed potatoes. Three of the varieties were from "fresh" seed potatoes that Michael picked up at the feed store. I planted one row of Yukon Gold from what we had left from last year's harvest. It's a sort of experiment to see if there's any difference between the "fresh" stuff and our own leftovers.






Thanks to our investment in that handy, dandy Jiffy Greenhouse, we ended up with way more plant starts than we needed. We're going to try selling what we have left to our neighbors. But, Michael and I have to agree on a price first....

-Trisa