It’s only 31 °F this morning but that’s not keeping me out of the garden. As far as I’m concerned, it’s Spring. It seems I’m not the only one either. I found this little friend squirming around the radish seedlings that I planted last weekend.

Everything in my spring garden is coming up nicely— lettuce, carrots, cabbage, spinach, radish. Even the garlic, which I thought I’d lose to the winter weather, is beginning to green up and add a few inches to the leaves.

Despite the crushing snow, I think those hoop houses worked out nicely.

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Mid-February means it’s chittin’ time!

In a few short weeks, it will be time to plant potatoes and I’m giving my spuds a head start by chitting them.

By doing so, the potatoes will be able to produce buds before they’re planted, which should give me a heavier and earlier crop.

Chitting is a pretty simple process. Simply lay out the seed potatoes in a cool, light spot and let them sprout. If more than one set of eyes begins to sprout, pare them back to a single sprout.

The entire process takes about 4 - 6 weeks (yes Anitra, those potatoes are going to be in the window over the sink until March), at which point I’ll carefully transplant them into one of my raised beds in the back yard with a little bone meal.

...and there they will sit, for about 110 days (July) until harvest.

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I was interested in extending the growing season a little further into the winter, so I built a few mini-hoop houses in the garden this weekend to cover my remaining crops.

To build the hoop houses, I bought 24” rebar stakes, a 100 foot roll of 3/4” polyethylene water pipe, and a 100 foot roll of 1 mil plastic sheeting—all for under $100.00.

I drove three rebar stakes into the ground, evenly spaced on each side of my 8’ beds, leaving about 1 foot sticking out of the ground. I then cut three 96” lengths of pipe, fitting each end over the rebar. To finish the hoop house, I pulled the sheeting over the hoops, loosely securing it with a few errant clay pots I have sitting about the garden.

I’m hoping to extend my growing season by a month or two into the winter as well as give me a head start on my greens and potatoes in the early spring. We’ll see how it goes but the thought of garden fresh cabbage, spinach, radish, carrots, and two varieties of lettuce in February sounds pretty tasty to me.

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August marks the end of our summer garden. Only a few plants remain including watermelon, pumpkins, and tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. Time to bring out the canning supplies and make some sauce.

Plum tomatoes from our six plants had completely taken over our refrigerator and as the only person in the house that eats them fresh, I couldn’t seem to make a dent in their numbers.

I pulled out a fantastic recipe we’d used several years before from Biba Caggiano’s Modern Italian Cooking. It’s modified slightly to include some fresh garlic from our garden and a few other minor additions.

Three hours and a steamy kitchen later, we have sauce. Ten pints of “Teagan and Ayn’s Totally Tomato Sauce” to be exact. All natural, fresh from the garden, and one full pound of tomatoes per jar.

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Peak tomato season has arrived, along with the annual realization that I put in too many plants again. I’m the only one in the house that eats them.

Along with the tomatoes, we’ve harvested about 1lb of pinto beans, more jalapenos than I can count, and the corn should come in next week. I think a hearty Mexican dinner, with fresh food from my yard, is in my future.

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The salad greens and carrots are in full force, the garlic is swelling, and all of my summer veggies are filling in the remaining empty spaces in the garden.

At this time last year, I was in the hospital—too weak to walk, frightened, and very, very sick. While I took comfort in having my family near me during my 2 week stay, it was frightening to know that a team of infectious disease specialists were making little progress towards understanding what they were dealing with. I didn’t know why I was there or when I could go back to the peace of my own home.

Instead of watching the corn emerge, listening to the cardinals sing, and enjoying the blooms of my irises, I was stuck in a hospital room with views like this of my family:

During my stay, Anitra would bring photos of the garden to me and while they gave me something to look forward to, it wasn’t the same as being there.

I spent this morning fertilizing my garlic with kelp for the last time this year. Bulbing will begin soon so I don’t want to provide the plants with any extra nitrogen for green growth. Before the rain set in this afternoon, I managed to get all the beds weeded and plant watermelon, beans, and sunflowers.

This year, I’m especially thankful for the opportunity to see it all come to life in person.

Photos from today: corn, garlic, dill, spinach, lettuce & carrots

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Early April brings a flurry of activity to my garden.

My cool-loving, darling crops (lettuce, cauliflower, radish, carrots, spinach, and cilantro), planted weeks ago, are up and thriving but beginning to crowd one another.

That’s brings about my most hated day in the garden—thinning day.

It’s not that I mind the work. It’s a very focused, relaxing activity for me. What I don’t enjoy is plucking healthy seedlings that I’ve nursed for weeks.

Sometimes I find myself rationalizing a decision to not thin.

“Who cares if those are too close. I don’t mind eating twisted and warped carrots.”

In the end though, the weaker one always gets plucked.

To thin, you have to focus on the future. You have to ask, “what is this carrot’s potential?” and “how can I help it get there?”

And so a few weaker plants are sacrificed for the stronger ones. Both go on to serve me—some as food, the others recycled into compost (but only after nibbling a leaf or two for a taste of what’s to come).

Other activities yesterday included:

• Checking on the spears of asparagus poking up
• Preparing Bed #3 where my corn will go in later this month
• Planting 2 small rows of beets
• Weeding the garlic
• Trimming the clover around the raised beds
• Turning the compost pile
• Weeding the spinach
• Fixing the wire on the trellis for our cucumbers
• Transplanting more Italian flat-leaf parsley
• and even more weeding around the lettuce, carrots, and lettuce

All of that was topped off with a rest in the hammock, which made the day about as good as it gets.

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