Another fantastic, sunny day at the farmette. Actually, it's been a bit dry, so I was out early watering my new white birch trees (okay, they're mostly sticks in the ground right now) and the portulaca (moss roses) I forgot to water yesterday when I put them in.
It's also a busy time. Planting season always makes me very happy, because I get to roll around in the soil. And I get to see what's up with the stuff that comes back every year, like these wee windflower anemones...right now they're everywhere.
The poplar grove I planted last spring on the west side of the farmette house is also growing apace. The pros aren't kidding when they say these babies can grow five feet a year. This one was a little stick in 2017, and look at it now, with a bleary-eyed me (at 5'5") taking a selfie beside it this morning!
This year, I thought I'd be a bit more strategic with the veggies.
I'm not the most meticulous planner, but I do try and move things around the big garden from year to year. Here's what I'm up to for 2018.
Fancy, huh?
I bought waaayyyy too many peas - the shell, snap and snow pea collection from Veseys, which means I need some major real estate to plant them. Thanks to the helpful adviser at the local co-op, I found an answer - string up a trellis net along the side of the garden and watch them climb up the six-foot height. Solves the space problem, and harvesting will be a bit easier since the peas will be up off the ground! Slick.
Here's what the actual patch looks like. Garlic is already up about a foot and always does really well in this Grey County soil.
Rob did the tilling and I already put down a layer of composted sheep manure over the top of it. Beautiful, eh? I think I'll try and put in oats or something as a cover crop in the fall to help the soil structure even more!
We'll overdo it, as usual, with the Roma tomatoes, and we'll have lots of onions - thanks to overdoing it on the allium family front, too. Along with the peppers, the combination makes really good salsa and chili sauce. But that's for later in the summer.
For now, we're off to Owen Sound to snoop around the nurseries for flower bed fillers and annuals. Yay! Until next week...