Seeding and Planning

46°f, about 8°C. Supposed to reach 66°f today! Clear this morning, with some thin clouds this afternoon.

Looks so messy, but how glorious to be outside!

We had a town day yesterday, with multiple stops, one being the feed store. There we bought laying mash for our hens, a bale of straw to put down under Buddy's run, and some seeds. The guys at the store commented that there was a veritable run on seeds yesterday, our first really nice day in a long time. 

Are people thinking they might need to grow their own this year because of the economic uncertainty? I don't know, but there I was, right with them. I only bought a few things for the garden--onion sets, lettuce, radish, carrot and cucumbee seeds. The cucumber seeds because they had my favorite oldtime variety, National Pickling. Sometimes this variety is hard to find. (Saving my own seed is out of the question because our gardens are too small to prevent cross-pollination with squash and other things like melons, etc.)

I also bought grass and white clover seed, because our lawn is all but dead after the drought, and then this hard winter. There are bare patches everywhere. 

Can you tell which is grass and which is clover? The feedstore didn't mark them, but it's not hard to tell.

I just broadcast the seed this morning, trusting to nature and the showers expected tonight to settle it in. At less than $5 a pound, I can replant easily enough if necessary.  I only bought a pound if each, and while it went a long way, I will need a bit more to finish up. I would prefer the laen to be all white clover, really, but mixed the seed this time around to see how well it comes up.

This afternoon I will try to prepare a little row for some onion sets, lettuce and radish seed. The garden is still mulch-covered, and I plan to continue this practice this summer.  I can see great advantages to it, the best being no need to plow, and far less weeding.

I got out in the garden a bit last night for the first time since the end of September.  That seems unbelievable to me, but the slope getting into the garden is just too tricky to take chances with my knee. I have fallen there before I had this knee replaced. It was nice to just wander around and see what's what. Larry didn't keep the electric fence going so deer did a lot of damage, killing off the kale and eating the strawberry plants to the ground, as well as nibbling back my leeks pretty far. (This year I plan to enclose an area with wire to protect my winter garden.) But the good news is that the leeks are still alive and will grow back. I put some netting over them to protect them from any further deer visits. Some turnips are also sprouting new green, which was nice to see. The fall-planted garlic which Larry planted for me does not appear to have survived. 

In the flowerbeds, I am cutting back the old tough leaves on the hellebores today. My roses look very bad, and I am pretty sure I lost some to the extreme cold and deer damage. The daffodils and other Spring bulbs are slowly emerging. In the past we had daffodils and crocus already in bloom but this year they are barely poking out of the ground. I can't blame them. Our weatherman posted that the European weather model predicts two more snowfalls for us, so winter is not yet over.

Well, back to it! Later, friends. Have the best day possible!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.