April in the Garden

First iris to bloom in the yard

I love this time of year, when some of my favorite flowers are blooming, iris, lilacs, roses, apple trees... It seems the garden is bursting at the seams these days!

I have so many old bearded iris in the yard, these plain white ones and some plain dark purples are the early bloomers; later there will be a tall yellow and a two toned purple and lavender.

lilacs in bloom

I love my lilac bush, it smells heavenly. The scent of iris and lilacs reminds me of when I was a kid and mom would put vases of them around the house.

apple blossoms

While that late snow browned the edges of some of the petals, the apple blossoms seem to be ok.

the terrace garden

On the hillside terrace garden the poppies, cilantro and wild flowers are getting a good start.

patio garden, west side of house

The patio still needs some cleaning up.

Princepe Borghese

But the Princepe Borhese tomatos are blooming.

Sweet Magnolia, a purple snow pea

Between the crazy weather and some rabbits, there are only a couple of Sweet Magnolia plants left, but they are making peas.

Sweet Magnolia pea blossom

And their flowers are pretty too!

Bleushokker pea blossom

There are only a couple of Bleushokker peas left too. They were in the coldest spot in the back garden and the Dec. snows did most of them in. They do have pretty flowers and they are the yummiest soup pea ever!

weedy spot in the back garden

I tried to get this silly picture to be vertical, but Blogger doesn't want to do it so it's sideways. This is a corner of the back garden, on the east end. This is a narrow trellis bed where I had planted Sugar Snap peas. there were only a couple of plants left in there and they were pretty sad looking with the crazy weather we've had this year, so I pulled them out along with all the weeds and fed them to the chickens.

Most of the weeds are gone.

Most of the weeds are gone now. I will probably plant either beans or cukes here, haven't made up my mind which one. On the right of this picture you can see the Mammoth Melting Sugar peas, which just started producing. More about those on Harvest Monday!

brassicas

This is one of the two brassica beds. on the right side is the purple sprouting broccoli, in the center are the Romanesco and on the left are either De Ciccio or Waltham, the tags got lost so I'm not sure which. I weeded out all the hen bit and discovered the bed was pretty dry; perhaps that's why they haven't done as well as they should have. Either that or I'll blame it on poor soil, late planting and crazy weather! Behind this bed is the one with the Mammoth Melting Sugar peas and behind that, the trellis bed that I weeded out.

Red Pontiac potaoes

The Red Pontiac potatoes that I planted in January are sprouting up and looking good. Some of them were just breaking ground when the snow came a couple of weeks ago; I just piled a little dirt over their tops and they didn't get frost bite.

Cecile Brunner Rose

The Cecile Brunner climbing rose that I planted a few years ago has grown quite large. I spotted the first blossom this after, after catching a whiff of it as I walked by. While the blossoms are very small, they are very fragrant. I hate that modern roses have so little scent and refuse to buy them. I want roses to smell, what use is pretty if there is no fragrance?

bolting celery

In the greenhouse the celery is bolting. The cilantro is already there. I let it bloom all over because it's small fine flowers are good for the beneficial insects.

Cilantro/coriander blooming

snapdragon

The snapdragons are blooming in their wall pots. The ones I planted around the yard are a bit behind since the air and soil outside are cooler.

tomato plants on the shelves, peas in the background

The greenhouse shelves are loaded with plants; more small fruited tomatoes, Snow White, Currant, Princepe Borghese.

baby tomato plants

The large fruited tomatoes were started later and so are smaller; Amish Paste, Italian Heirloom, Black from Tula.

basil seedlings

Lots of Classic Italian and Lime Basil seedlings.

green strawberry

There are some green strawberries in the greenhouse bed.

old seeds sprout!

The greatest thing though, is those Hale's Best Jumbo cantaloupe seeds that I saved in 2003 had almost 100% germination in the greenhouse under their cute little Victorian cloche!

Chickens!

And here are all the chickens, my four hens and my young Buff Orpington rooster, standing tall in the center. He isn't crowing yet but I have seen him getting after the hens, so I think I'll set aside some money next month for an incubator. I'd like to hatch small lots of chicks at a time for meat.


These chickens are not as tame as my previous ones. My other chickens I raised from chicks when my grand daughters were with me all the time and the girls were always petting and playing with them so they were very tame. These were in a large pen with about 50 others and while not exactly wild they don't come sit in your lap either! In fact they are just now getting the idea that when I come up to the fence and call them they should come because it means I have a treat, either scraps, weeds or worms.

Busy Busy!

Victorian style cloche

Spring is always a busy time of year in the garden. This year I'm busier than most because of the rapid warm up. We are hitting 80 degrees this week and things are growing fast.

In that greenhouse bed I cleared the other day I planted some more Hale's Best Jumbo cantaloupes, an heirloom variety. To help keep them even warmer for good germination I've covered them with this Victorian style cloche that my daughter gave me.

In the space around them I've planted chard on one side and Strawberry spinach on the other. Strawberry spinach is related to regular spinach and the edible weed called Lamb's Quarters. In fact it looks like Lamb's Quarters but in addition to edible leaves it has a strawberry like fruit. The seeds I have are a bit old, so we'll see if they do anything.

New Greenhouse Door

Last fall when I finished the greenhouse I didn't have any really good scrap lumber to complete a door on the west end, so I just covered it with plastic. It's been getting way too hot in there even with all the windows into the house open to pull out some of the heat. But I haven't wanted to pull the top of the plastic off yet, it is still under 50 degrees most nights. But it definitely needed more ventilation during the day. So I scrounged through the piles and found some wood and built a new door, covered with chicken wire. I also pulled the plastic off the other door. Now I can keep critters out but still have ventilation during the day. If the weather turns fickle I can tack the plastic back on both ends.

potted potatoes and celery

While I was working in the greenhouse, I pulled out the potted potatoes to live on the patio. Here you can also see some of the celery plants. This batch is in an old ice chest and apparently the soil isn't so great. They are stunted and yellow and not doing very well, so I'll probably feed them to the rabbits and rework the soil and plant something else.

Recycled storage containers and ice chests

I have a number of old storage containers that while they were in good shape, their lids are long gone. So here they are as planters, along with an old ice chest. I spent some time planting Snow White cherry tomatoes and Princepe Borghese, an Italian heirloom tomato for drying. I loosened up the soil in them, added some organic fertilizer and some fresh compost. Here on the stone patio it's a bit warmer at night than in the open garden, something I discovered during a late freeze one year. The tomatoes in the garden froze to death while all the tomatoes on the patio survived.

I'm linking up with Harvest Monday, a blog hop sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions. I don't seem to have taken any harvest pictures this week, but I've been harvesting my usual salad along with greens to cook like chard, red mustard, spinach and lamb's quarters. (super good with diced bacon and onions fried together then put the greens in to wilt) Also peas and of course eggs from my new chickens. I've seemed to have mis laid my calculator but a rough count looks like some where in the neighborhood of 30 pounds of produce picked and eaten in the month of March and a total of 20 eggs since 3/24. All four of the hens are laying now, so I'll probably be over run with them shortly.