Saturday we finished planting the greenhouse. We planted a couple of varieties of Anaheim style peppers, Jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, tomatoes, basil, carrots, beets, lettuce, swiss chard, spinach, and slicing cucumbers. The herb bed is doing well, except for the oregano plant which didn’t survive the winter. Dan dug that up the oregano plant I replanted in that space one of the varieties of basil. Everything is labeled because I’ll have forgotten what went where within a few weeks.
We planted carrots and beets in both these center beds, two kinds of each.
A different kind of tomato plant. We like to experiment every year and see if we can find a new favorite eating tomato.
Two cauliflower plants. These are called Veronica and we loved them last year.
Between the Veronica and this whole long row of tiny tomato plants is one variety of basil seeds.
Herb bed. The sage, chives, and thyme are all doing well, and I planted another variety of basil in the blank space.
Spinach, lettuce, swiss chard, marigolds, and a ton of baby volunteer dill plants.
The entire south wall is pepper plants. And the west bed next to the peppers is slicing cucumbers.
Sunday the plan is finishing the garden planting.
We hauled a bunch of stuff down to the garden in the Ranger. So useful year round. The grass is almost up to the top of the tires. We keep scaring deer out of the grass whenever we go down to the garden, these days. It’s like a jungle down there. All the extra moisture in the aspen grove is going to mean super tall grass this summer.
Today we planted bush beans, pickling cucumbers and more slicing cucumbers. We already have growing peas, Walla Walla onions, white keeping onions, swiss chard, lettuce, spinach, and potatoes. The potatoes are just now starting to come up – we were a bit worried that we might have planted them a bit too too deeply this year, but it seems to be ok.
The first potato plant is up, and it looks really good. Several others are peeking up now. It won’t hurt to have them a bit behind when they usually get ripe because it is a little early to start trying to store them until late September.
The onions are starting to look better than a few weeks ago. The cold weather seemed to hold them back from prior years.
The peas are almost ready to start blooming. We be eating those before the end of June.
All the fruit plants are doing well, flowers all over the place, except for the blackberries. The winter was too cold for those plants. What wimps!!! The canes all died back down to the roots again. So… rats!!! Dan had to dig those all up and I want to replace them with flowers, even though I know they will probably get killed by rodents. I have delusions of having flowers in the garden, so I’ll try it anyway.
It looks like our peach tree is going to survive the rather brutal haircut and transplant process. That’s totally exciting. That would be so cool to have our own peaches, so we have very high hopes. Five years from now we’ll know if it is going to work, or not.
Our peach tree is about 18 inches tall, and showing signs of life! Yay!!! Dan said it reminded him of Baby Groot, so that’s what we call it now.
Lots of blossoms on the larger of our two apple trees. This year we’re going to thin the fruit to one apple per clump of flowers. That should do good things for increasing the size of the fruit.
This is the small apple tree, and it has a lot more blossoms this year. They are so sweet smelling.
Dan pruned the big cherry tree and it doesn’t have as many blossoms as last year, but we should still have plenty of pie cherries for the freezer.
This is the small cherry tree and the way the fruit grows is very different from the big tree. It’s just starting to put on serious growth.
One of the gooseberry plants is ten feet across again, because Dan didn’t give it a haircut this spring. And it’s taller than me!! Ok, so that’s not really an impressive statistic, but still it’s weird to look up to see the top of the plant. And the red currants are also taller than me. The gooseberries and josta berry plants all have fruit already forming, thanks to the legions of bees happily buzzing around the plants.
This is the Poorman’s Gooseberry plant and it got a huge haircut this year. Most of the branches are now upright, which is going to make picking a lot easier. You can’t see the wicked thorns hidden in among the leaves.
This is the other gooseberry plant, and it’s a monster! It’s also completely covered with flowers, and the bees have a splendid time with this plant.
Kind of hard to believe, but these red currant bushes have way more flowers this year than they did last.
The black raspberry canes easily top the eight foot tall garden fence. They aren’t blooming quite yet.
Lots of flowers on the red raspberries, and they’ll be open next week, for sure.
The josta berry plants are already setting fruit. Due to the heavy pruning this spring, we won’t have as many of these fruits to deal with this year, but next year should be amazing.
This is the rhubarb plant AFTER we took out half the canes.
The low bush blueberry plants are completely covered with flowers this year. They certainly didn’t mind the very cold winter.
Much as we love blackberries this climate is simply too cold for them, so Dan dug these up and I’m going to replace the with flowers of some description.
Newly planted strawberries, destined for chocolate covered strawberries. The plants are looking really good so far, and I’m looking forward to playing with them.
The other strawberry bed isn’t doing so great. The plants weren’t protected by the snow because the wire cage kept the snow off the plants, and as a result a great many of the plants died. Oh well, the remaining plants will send out tons of runners this year, and repopulate the bed with new plants.
The chocolate mint is coming up really great this year, and that’s wonderful, even after transplanting those plants to make way for the peach tree.
Two chocolate mint plants, moved over next to the gazebo. A better place for them to live; they were in danger of getting stepped on previously.
Then it’s just a matter of weeding and watering, and picking stuff starting at the end of June. First to be ripe will be the peas and lettuce and spinach.
The bee balm plant is spreading a bit. The hummingbirds love this plant, which starts blooming fairly late summer and continues until it freezes very hard.
Outside the garden fence is as old lilac bush which is getting ready to bloom.
Inside the fence, sprinkled around, are wild Pansies.
Fun!