written by Yvonne

Just about all of the spring garden has been planted. Cabbage and carrots went down on 3/6 and this past Sunday (3/11) the collards, spinach, kale and lettuce were planted. I planned for a really big spinach patch thinking I had a lot of spinach seed. When I pulled the seeds out, I only found two kinds so I planted what I had. Later when I went to put some other seeds back, I found three more varieties of spinach! Well, those will have to wait for late summer I guess.  We got two good rains since Saturday so hopefully some sprouts will start to appear soon.

2016 - Smaller and More Manageable

written by Yvonne

By late Spring of last year, T and I became a little overworked and a lot burnt out. Too much of... well, too much everything: bees, garden, yard work, house upkeep, commitments, etc. We took time off from the garden and did not plant anything for Fall and Winter.  This turned out to be a great decision as it gave us time to re-think how best to manage our time as it relates to the garden.

The first change we are implementing is that I won't be writing nearly as many blog posts. Originally I was going to give this up altogether, but we use the blog for reference purposes, and folks do enjoy reading about our successes and failures. So instead of writing something every week, it will likely be more like once a month.  (I mean really - how many pictures of indecipherable, tiny green seedlings does one need to write about?)

The second change is that I will be the primary manager of the garden. This should allow Tom more time for his bees and will allow me to mange the garden around my schedule.

The last change is that I will plant only two beds at any given time and the other two beds will fallow. This should allow for easier management and not be so time consuming.

Although the weather is still very cold, the bright sunny day and 0% change of rain/snow allowed us to spend a few hours on Sunday doing some prep work. Tom tilled beds 3 and 4...

and we refilled the boxes with a load of dirt.

Beds 3 and 4 are now ready for planting and I will spend time this weekend picking out and ordering seeds from the Sow True seed catalog.

Of course, everyone was eager to help.

Not too hard to tell which dog likes her paws firmly on the ground and which one is more up for adventure.

Yep... Still Green

written by Yvonne

Honey and Olive wanted to make sure everyone knows how much they help in all of our gardening endeavors.  They did a good job of making sure these bales of straw didn't blow away.

And yes, you guessed it. We are still (happily) eating spinach and lettuce!  Baskets full!

And there is still plenty more growing!  Actually, after harvesting a good amount of the spinach pictured here, we started pulling up the plants because they've begun to bolt.

This is the other end of the lettuce/spinach bed. Tom tilled it and planted (from left to right) snap peas, Provider bush beans, Maxibell bush beans.  In the background you can see new rows of spinach coming up in bed #3.

The collards, Swiss chard and kale are just about ready to eat.  Next weekend I'll likely make something with the Swiss chard. Upon further inspection, Tom determined that the large plant in the right foreground is a couple of turnips, not collards.  Still good eatin' either way.

Only a few of the peas have come up so far (center).

This volunteer cucumber showed up out of nowhere. It's a little early for cucumbers but if it wants to come up now, fine by us.

Still plucking off the strawberry flowers and it seems to be working because the plants are really growing nicely.

We are a behind in starting summer seeds. We should have started melons, squash, peppers and tomatoes a few weeks ago, but there are only so many hours in a weekend.  Tom filled up the pots I made with dirt and tomorrow I'll get some squash, melons, and pumpkin seed started.

Tom also tilled the garden annex area. Ya know, I think we just like having this as potential so we get it ready every year and think we're going to find just the right thing to make it work. Yes, a few squashes materialized last year, but for the most part, it's been a dud. Well NO MORE! Boy do we have plans for it now!  You may recall we purchased rosemary and two kinds of mint plants in early Spring. This is where they are going to reside and we have high hopes they will 'take' since both are aggressive and hearty. We've managed to keep the plants alive through some really cold weather. Now that the bed is ready, they'll get planted tomorrow.  THEN, we're going to take chicken wire previously used for compost bins and hang it on the outside of the carport.  We'll secure it down at the bottom of this of brick wall with stakes.  Then we'll transplant some jasmine at the back of this bed and let it grow up the chicken wire.  We'll have a nice beautiful natural wall blocking off the ugly carport. It'll make for a much nicer view from the back patio.  We did the same thing several years ago on one end of the front porch and it's worked great.

Whew!  It's finally done! And what a job it was. It took two weekends, many hours, 3 broken tools, and MANY loads of brush wheeled to the front yard for pick up.  But the back fence line has now been completely cleared out. We cleared a third of it together two weekends ago then Tom finished the last 2/3 by himself.

Here's what it looked like before....

and here it is after!

Before...

after!

This is before mostly shows the overgrown compost bins. Nonetheless, here is before...

and after!  Doesn't even look like the same yard, does it? Now that it's a nice open, accessible space Tom was able to get to the trees to hang some bee boxes. (Read more about that later this week at www.tsbeeshoney.com.)  Our neighbors told us numerous times over the weekend how great it looked. Guess it was worse than we thought.

More Yard Work Than Gardening

written by Yvonne

Believe it or not there are compost bins in this photo. Last time we moved the compost bins, we put up eight bins total. After a while, we realized we weren't using them all so we decided to reduce the number to four.  We removed two bins a while ago and this weekend it was time to take down the other two and move the remaining bins to a new location. At the same time, we planned to clear out the whole back fence line.

First we cleared out the new space where the bins will reside. Next, Tom cut off all the jasmine that had grown in, around, and through the bins - not an easy job at all. The vines had become so intertwined with the wire it was hard to find the beginning of one and the end of another. (Stephanie - if you're still following, here's a good Find Olive photo.)

As Tom unearthed the bins, I went to task cutting the vines off.

My gloves are a bit too big for my hands so they became a hindrance for this detailed job. When I needed to use them again, all I had to do was find Honey and there they were.

With the space cleared out and the wire free of jasmine vines, the bins were set up in their new location. Tom went to work moving the compost shovel-full by shovel-full from the old location to the new. This took a very long time as we had quite a bit of compost 'cooking'.

Here is the area before....

and here is the after!  What a difference, eh?  The compost is now to the right and pushed all the way back to the fence. We cleared about half the fence line and we'll finish up the rest this coming weekend. The plan is to plant bee-friendly flowers and ground cover along the fence and use some of the space for possible bee yard expansion. (For more specifics on this, go to www.tsbeeshoney.com.)

Tom used several buckets to make compost tea which is just compost mixed with water. After these sit for a week, they'll get strained and the nutrient-rich water will be poured over the berries and fig tree.

After a long, tough day in the yard Saturday, we were treated to a relaxing day at a Charlotte Knights game (thanks again Porter). What a great weekend!

What Color is Spring? Green!

written by Yvonne

Why do weeds grow so well in winter? I guess the berries grew too, you just can't see them because they are surrounded by weeds. Time to hand pull and ton of junk from the brambles.

Before (left side of bed).

After.

Before (right side of bed).

After. I didn't quite finish this side but it's good for now. Talk about A LOT of work!

Olive and Honey were big help in the yard as always. As I cleared a spot of weeds, Olive would lay in that spot. It warmed up nicely as the day progressed so I took off my socks and continued weeding. As you can see Honey found those socks and brought them to a patch that hadn't been weeded yet. Guess she wanted to ensure that I knew this area still needed to be worked on.

Lettuce still producing very well...

as is spinach.

And again this week collards were harvested - five bags worth...

and four bags of lettuce and spinach.

A Beautiful Day to Begin TY's 2015 Veggie Patch

written by Yvonne

We are still here!  And we're still gardening! This past year, late Summer, all of Fall, and the first half of Winter turned out to be much busier than usual. So although we did continue gardening, we had to give up the blog posts because of time constraints. But it's a new year with new commitments to our garden, our good food habits, and our blog.

Sometimes the amount of things to do in the garden are overwhelming so it helps to have a plan that works with the amount of time you actually have for the day. Otherwise, you can get sidetracked and the things that really need to get done don't. So we had a task list for the day and worked it from top to bottom.

Tom's main focus was on berries. We bought strawberry plants (a new addition to TY's Veggie Patch this year) a couple weeks ago and we couldn't wait any longer to get them planted or we'd lose them. Unlike the raspberry, blackberries and blueberries, strawberries wouldn't do too good directly in the ground. Therefore, we decided to take the herb box and make it the strawberry box. The herbs will get a new home (more to come about that in early Summer).

Tom got to work cleaning out the herb box. He salvaged some oregano that survived the winter and put those in a separate pot until the new herb bed is ready.

This is the strawberry bundle we bought at Renfrow Hardware. There are 26 separate plants in this bundle. Each plant...

looks like this.

12 plants made it into the box. The rest will be planted in large containers alongside the box.

Next up he planted a new blueberry bush.  He put it right next to the other two we already had, close to the bee hives.

Over the winter, we had kale, collards, spinach, and some lettuce growing under the hoop houses. In late fall/early winter, we harvested and ate some of all of them and left them to grow under the cover. Quite frankly, it's been months since I've even looked under them to see what has survived and what hasn't. Let's take a look...

Well, not bad. Looks like things didn't grow much, but they didn't die either so that's gives us a nice start for early Spring, otherwise known as "over-wintering".

First job for me was to weed this bed so the lettuce doesn't continue to get choked out.

Not too many weeds grew up between the kale and collards so that was an easy job.

On to beds 2 & 3. Since half of bed 2 was covered by the hoop house, it had virtually no weeds. Unfortunately, it also didn't have any turnips growing, which is what Tom planted in the fall. Once Tom finished with the berries, he weeded bed 3.

PLANTING TIME!!!

We put up markers even though all of this didn't get planted today. That way we made sure to leave space for the rest of the Spring plantings. Today we planted lettuce, collards, kale, Swiss chard, broccoli, and round 1 of cabbage. By the way, is there another kind of chard? If not, why is it not just called "chard"? Anyone?

When we bought the strawberries and blueberries, we also purchased a few herb plants. Two kinds of spearmint and one kind of rosemary.  Our job with them right now is to keep them warm and watered in the greenhouse until they are ready to go into the #%!*#$ spot next to the back patio where we can't seem to get anything else to grow.

Olive and Honey were SOOOO excited to spend the day outside.  They are out of practice so they pooped out pretty quick. And, they weren't the only ones.