Sunday, April 29, 2012

Room With A View

Come gardening season, my hubby's second floor office window is truly a room with a view.  I never tire of going up there to chronicle the stages of garden growth from this time of year all the way through the harvest.  (I do realize this may be boring as heck to you all, but it's a visual record for me during each glorious gardening season.  A gardening season which I missed so much last year while spending the summer with hands covered with minor carpentry injuries, polyurethane, paint and various adhesives rather than ground in garden dirt.)


Yesterday Papa Pea cultivated the field garden and pumpkin patch.


This successfully annihilated the robust little weeds of various varieties that were starting their assault in an attempt to take over the gardens.


We also plowed up an extension to the blueberry patch where we planted our three new little haskap bushes.  This area needs to sit for a couple of days now so the roots of the sod turned over start to die.  Then we'll till it up a couple more times before adding compost and a mulch covering for this year's growing season.  We haven't made a decision what we'll plant there in the future (more haskaps?), but it gets rid of a little more lawn area that we won't have to mow this year.


I finished prepping the strawberry patch yesterday and feel good about that.  Now the half-dormant plants need a good soaking rain and some warm sunshine and they will take off.

I still need to get the blueberry patch mulched with wood shavings.  With luck, that will happen today.  Starting tomorrow, our whole week looks to be filled with rain so today may be my last chance to play outside all day.

The Sweet Peas haven't gone in yet.  I'm about two weeks later than usual for getting them planted, so I'd like to get that done today also.  (I'm planting those you sent me, Erin, so get ready for more pictures of Sweet Peas than you may want to see.)

Now the field garden is ready for shelling peas and potatoes which I'll plant as soon as I can.  I haven't figured out this year's layout for the field garden yet so I'd better sit down with pencil, paper and my thinking cap soon.  I rotate everything planted there each year and am contemplating putting the potatoes, for the first time, in the area designated as the pumpkin patch.  I just have to do the math to make sure the 100' of potatoes we need will fit in that area.  Then the squash and pumpkins will be planted in a corner of the field garden for this season.


See that white stuff on the grass above?  Yep, that's frost this morning.  We had a low temp of the mid 20s overnight.  A couple more weeks and hopefully we'll be done with Jack Frost's antics.  For a few months anyway.

Got some more seedlings started under lights two nights ago.  The peppers and tomatoes I started around the middle of the month are over an inch high.  What a miracle to watch . . . those fragile, little sprouts coming from seeds so small I lose them under my fingernail when trying to plant them.

I sure don't take very good care of my house during these months of spending so much time outside.  I promised myself I'd do a cursory cleaning this morning before heading out to play in the dirt so I'd better get on that pronto.

18 comments:

Dani said...

"Spring has sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where the birdie is...?"

Spring and summer are garden time, autumn and winter are house time, at least in my household. All that prep work has got to ensure you a brilliant harvest :)

Mama Pea said...

Dani - I'm feeling so good getting as much done early on in our season this year. I get a bad reaction to bug bites and I know as soon as our weather truly warms up, those %^&!* black flies out there will be wanting to feast on me so the more I can get done before they appear, the better! Gotta admit, though, that it does bother me to come in from a hard day's work outside and have the inside of the house a mess. Where's that maid I hire for the summer? You know, the one who never shows up?

Tombstone Livestock said...

You will enjoy the fruits of your labor this summer. Have you tried usning "Off" or similar repellent for the flies? Have fun playing in the dirt.

Erin said...

You post as many sweet pea pics as you want, I can't grow them at ALL down here so I would love to see them bloom somewhere LOL. Your gardens are looking fresh and full of promise for this year, I can't wait to see the pumpkin patch, you didn't garden last summer and if I remember the year before you had planted a cover crop there so I didn't get to see pumpkins right? I have a hard time with them here so there's another thing I live vicariously through you to see LOL! Rain here and cold and windy so even though I want to be making progress on the garden my muscles are happy to sit inside and flip through my Country Living Encyclopedia :)

Sparkless said...

Oh I love sweet peas! I haven't attempted growing any but I think I'll grab some seed and plant some this year. Hopefully it won't get too hot too fast for them to fully bloom.

Your gardens are looking wonderful so far Mama Pea. I can hardly wait to see how they look with all the veggies growing in them.

Carolyn said...

I am soooo jealous of your tilled garden filled with DIRT!! Thanks for sharing your garden pictures as it gives me something to aspire towards!

And although I AM wildly jealous of your garden beds, I do have this to say:
My sweet peas have been blooming for a week now! Ha! :)

Tami said...

I think someone needs to move her pretty sewing room to another room...ahem...You know the one with the view? Does Papa Pea like yellow? @;)

Amy Dingmann said...

I'm kind of with Tami on this one...don't you think Papa and you could switch rooms? ;) That surely is an uplifting view!

Sue said...

I'd love to find somewhere to get an "over-view" of my garden. What a neat spot to get pics from....

Mama Pea said...

Tombstone Livestock - Yupper, I've tried everything on the market in the way of repellents and some homemade ones, too. Nothing seems to work. If there is a biting bug within a five mile radius, it finds me. When I'm in a group outside, people ask me to stand about three feet away from everyone else . . . as bait. All the bugs go after me and no one else is bothered. :o/

Erin - You remembered correctly about the pumpkin patch for the past two years. We kept plowing in cover crops on it both years and the soil really looks better this year. I just decided tonight that I'm going to plant my potatoes there this year so the pumpkins will end up in the field garden. Let's hope they don't take over the whole area!

Sparkless - There are a lot of flowers I like but Sweet Peas have got to be near the top of my list. Please do plant some this year and we'll compare how ours do, okay?

Carolyn Renee - Oooooh, you have Sweet Peas blooming already!? Please post a picture of them so I can see if I can get a whiff of their heavenly fragrance! (Why can't they make perfume that actually smells like Sweet Peas? Or lilacs. Or peonies. Answer me that!)

Tami - Well, ya know, we have kicked that idea around. But he enjoys the view so much and when I quilt, I get totally involved and hardly look up, let alone stare out the window so I think he actually enjoys the view more than I would. BUT we do have another room upstairs that is currently just a storage area so who knows what could happen in the future . . . ??

Mama Tea - I kinda like him up there and out of my main work area, if you know what I mean. Besides, he's truly an absent minded professor and his office is a MESS so he needs to be up in his ivory tower!

Sue - Well, m'dear, you drag a biiiig ladder over to the side of the house, climb up on your shiny, metal, blue roof . . . ;o} Seriously, it does give a totally different perspective to see all from "up above."

Judy T said...

The only Birds eye view I could get would be from crawling up into the hay loft in the barn. But maybe I can snap a few photos from up there. We'll see how ambitious I am.
I've never actually grown Sweet Peas. I do think they're beautiful so I'm not sure why I've never grown them.
Judy

Anonymous said...

I absolutely love that you share the progress, and the planning of your garden each year:) Looking forward to watching it grow.

judy said...

hello,I'm still here ,just done in, bye

Susan said...

My fingers started twitchin' just looking at all that wonderful worked up soil! I hope we have had the last of the frosty temps here - three nights/mornings running of low 20s. Bleck. We will be watching your progress and enjoying with you - without having to weed!

Lisa said...

Your dirt looks amazing and your gardens are beautiful. How exciting to be able to look over them and watch everything grow. Am so glad you are gardening this year! Your excitement comes through your posts and it's so much fun to enjoy with you.

Mama Pea said...

Judy - Sweet Peas are easy to grow (if your climate isn't too hot!) provided you give them some kind of a trellis to climb up. Lots of blossoms for gorgeous bouquets inside the house!

Stephanie - Thanks for saying that. I often worry my posts are B-O-R-I-N-G to everyone but me!

judy - Hang in there, Lady! Things are due to get better for you, that's for sure.

Susan - B-b-b-but, does this mean you're NOT going to come live here this summer and be the homestead's official weeder of wayward weeds??

Lisa - *I* am so glad I'm gardening this year! I missed it so last year. (Glad to hear my posts aren't dull as . . . well, posts! You know, the wooden kind.)

dr momi said...

Mama Pea.... I swear I can hear the excitement in your voice. I think you really missed your garden last year!

Mama Pea said...

dr momi - I sure did miss gardening last year, no doubt about that! It's nice that this year the snow (what little we had) went so early that I can get a jump start on all the prep work.