What did you do in the garden today?

Mundane doings for the day. However, the weather was beautiful so I didn't quite mind.

Pulled up dead roots from something that lived here before me (I'd have to channel the previous owner -- no idea!). Then trimmed the cherry blossom trees. Finally, swept up live/dead matter, separated into piles and added to c bin. My Nasturtium seeds are beginning to emerge! Something else is coming about but I don't remember what it is. CRS...but I'll never stop trying to plant things!!!

Birdielee said:

We're growing, yes, but not sustaining. We're eating turnip greens and collard flower stalks (both overwintered, zone 6) Fyi violet leaves are edible and yummy. Flowers, too. The leaves are tough until cooked. Next come lambs quarters, in my area. Really good food. Leaves and tender stalk tips. Can be eaten raw but much nicer cooked and salt, pepper, buttered. Lambs quarters is related to quinoa. You can eat the seeds, too, but have to go easy on them.i forget what they do in excess.
Dandelion greens aren't bitter after they're cooked, either. Unless my dandelions are special.

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I made wild violet jelly this year. It is delicious!

Hubby met me after work and we went to look at "free" puppies. He decided we needed 2 of them. Won't pick them up until next Saturday as they are only 6 weeks old. Would prefer to wait 2 weeks, but I'm glad I got them to agree to at least 1 week.
They are lab/rottweiler mix. Both females. 1 is light brown/blond with some white down her snout. The other is black with white front feet ( not sure about the rear feet) and tan on her face with a little bit of white around her mouth.
Now we debate names until we decide on the right ones.
Poured down rain all day today and tomorrow is supposed to be the same. So no garden work today. So far I have 4 chicks that have hatched in the incubator. 3 blacks and 1 yellow. Hope for still more. Temps may have been a bit low so I will give them a few extra days.

Two puppies Karen you need your head examined

Morning . I plan to plant my green beans early May weather permitting . My tomato starts are not growing very fast . They need more heat . Usually I have them in the unheated greenhouse by now but weather has not permitted . It gets really warm/hot in there on sunny days . Waiting on flower seeds to sprout .

Wow, two puppies at once! That'd be a dream come true when i was a kid.
Congratulations getting a real dog at a real price. Where i live everything gets spayed and neutered with a vengeance except pitbulls, so they can sell all dogs (except pits) for 800-$1000 per DOG. That's some kind of craziness.

karenerwin said:

Hubby met me after work and we went to look at "free" puppies. He decided we needed 2 of them. Won't pick them up until next Saturday as they are only 6 weeks old. Would prefer to wait 2 weeks, but I'm glad I got them to agree to at least 1 week.
They are lab/rottweiler mix. Both females. 1 is light brown/blond with some white down her snout. The other is black with white front feet ( not sure about the rear feet) and tan on her face with a little bit of white around her mouth.
Now we debate names until we decide on the right ones.
Poured down rain all day today and tomorrow is supposed to be the same. So no garden work today. So far I have 4 chicks that have hatched in the incubator. 3 blacks and 1 yellow. Hope for still more. Temps may have been a bit low so I will give them a few extra days.

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karenerwin said:

I made wild violet jelly this year. It is delicious!

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Do tell? How do I make violet jelly?

Birdielee said:

Wow, two puppies at once! That'd be a dream come true when i was a kid.
Congratulations getting a real dog at a real price. Where i live everything gets spayed and neutered with a vengeance except pitbulls, so they can sell all dogs (except pits) for 800-$1000 per DOG. That's some kind of craziness.

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BTW Birdielee. I would really like to see a general location edited in your profile. It is hard to talk gardening with someone who might be located in Nome, AK for all I know. No disrespect intended at all. Here is how I did it on the PC version.

ALSO a Late EDIT- It was around $400 to fully do the initial vetting of our latest cat. Good god I never remember getting sticker shock doing "the works" on an animal in the past. She was a completely uncomplicated one to vet, no parasites or anything I usually expect to see in this region doing our street rescues.

Good morning gardeners. Yesterday was quite a nice warm day. I planted a twelve foot row of potatoes and 10 baby leeks. I planted more potatoes than I had planned, but stopped short of a 16 foot row and gave the left over potato slips to my neighbor. Of course it's supposed to rain, then snow and get down near freezing overnight tonight. So I'll be covering that all with plastic. I'll hold off on planting anything else until Tuesday or Wednesday when the temperatures are supposed to warm up to a more near normal. All this rain is taking a toll on my yard and the gosh darn grass is actually growing. Good grief! My peach tree is starting to bloom for real now, yay! My purple azalea is now blooming and the daffodils in the front yard are starting to bloom. The perennial herbs and the parsley are coming back to life, especially the thyme. Only planning to let the chickens out for a little while this morning before the rain starts. I need to clean the coop. It will likely be raining until tomorrow evening, but this gives me time to attend to household chores and get the brooder setup for the arrival on my baby BO's on Wednesday. Good golly @karenerwin, 2 puppies at once? I've done that, I ended up having to give one up, however, you have more room and a few extra pairs of hands to help out. I'm sure they will be excellent farm dogs. Have a great day everyone.

Wow! Just caught up on this thread! Great pics everyone!

Potatoes were planted about 2 weeks ago or so, and it has gotten down to 27F at night once, and several times in the 30-33F range. I scraped away the dirt from several of them and all are green and growing! So, your potatoes @Wee Farmer Sarah might just be fine without covering. We did cover our strawberry plants every night that had a frost warning, and they are fine.

I planted beet and turnip seed directly in the garden, I also planted the onion sets. I planted Texas Sweet, white, and yellow. I have extras so I will need to see what I can plant them with in the garden.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time taking the sprouted pepper and tomato seeds (in Jiffy peat pods) and planting them in larger pots, with a soil mix and some fertilizer. I planted them deep, with only the leaves poking out of the top. I did this to encourage more roots off the stem. But, it is still so cold, and overcast so its hindering their growth! They get taken out daily into the brighter light. While they were growing initially I would put them out in the portable greenhouse, even if fairly cold outside, but they were protected.

Rooster story: We have 3 males, lots of females. We removed one of the males, a Red Dorking, that was fighting all the time, and trying to mate any female that moved. He was put into his own pen, in solitary for about 10 days. We then gave him the two Red Dorking females that were in the flock. The solitary confinement seems to have mellowed him a bit. After about 3 days of the three of them together, we let them out to range a bit. He was trying to fight the other two males through the run fencing! So, it is still a good thing that he is separated. However, he is a pic of him crowing on the top of a raised bed (not yet planted, so I let them dust bathe as much as they wanted). Notice how short his legs are! He is a Dorking, and they have short/stout legs with 5 toes. You all know that when a rooster crows, he is standing pretty much as tall as he can. hee hee...he is so short! Any name suggestions? Dorkings originate from Roman times. In the pic, you can see his pen in the background - it is part of the compost set up.



We planted the Asian pears a few weeks ago. They looked like sticks as they are "professionally pruned" from the nursery and shipped dormant. So, imagine my surprise when the "stick" had a flower on it!




Then, to top of this long post, we were outside around 7pm and noticed this bat on the side of our chimney! He looked like he/she was waking up, but still asleep. Anyway, it got me thinking about building a bat house. Spouse is game, so maybe that will be a summer project. They look for nests in the spring, so generally best to have the house up in the fall/winter, so they can find it when they are looking in the spring. We will see if the thought amounts to action!