March May Madness

May has been a crappy less than perfect month for gardening. We hoped that by Memorial Day, everything would be in the gardens, and we perhaps would be picking fresh greens, but the weather this month has really slowed us and the garden down. Last year, we were having really nice weather and little rain. This year, just the opposite. Because we do track our progress each year, it's hard not to be discouraged when you see that peas were a foot tall at this point last year, and we were picking greens first of June. It looks like it will be a good few weeks before we are ready to start our CSA.

Despite the "setback" if you want to call it that (Mom never wants to, as she says the garden always catches up), we still look forward to a great gardening season. The CSA model for the year is to go 16-18 weeks, whichever the garden allows. Let's hope for the 18!

Here are some notes from the monthly journal:

May 22
Set out first round of cabbage & cauliflower seedlings. The apple and pear trees are now in blossom, which completes the flowering in the orchard. With all the rain, there have not been any honey bees. I am a little worried about this, as the bees do most of the pollination. Hoping the weather changes soon and the little buggers return!

May 26
Finally the rain stopped this week and the garden is drying out some. We were able to plant cukes, parsnips, turnips, golden beets, and the dreaded beans. (You may have noticed we call the beans names. It's because they are the most aggressive growing plant, need to be picked every day, and because we have succession plantings, we pick them non stop from late July to October!) Got a 2nd crop of peas in, carrots also. Gardening for market is much different than gardening for yourself. There is a constant rotation of planting and replanting that goes on in order to keep items in "stock" for more than one week. We also finished planting the 14 rows of potatoes - much easier to plant than they will be to harvest.

One positive thing I can say about a week and a half of rain, it brought the birds to the feeder in flocks. I had finches, grosbeaks, orioles, bluebirds, scarlet tanager, and an indigo bunting. I had every color of the rainbow except green. I think I would have to have an escaped parakeet for that. I did once have a cockatiel in the oak tree.

In The Merry, Merry Month of May

So May has not seemed so merry the past few days, where all we have seen is gray sky and rain. But Mom keeps busy, getting us more and more ready for the season ahead, despite the ever present gloominess. Here are some interesting things seen on the farm this month, as well as what's been going on in the gardens.


May 1st - 1 row of snap peas planted. Finished pruning the orchard and sprayed all the trees with dormant oil.

May 2nd - manure on most of the garden - almost ready to till if it doesn't rain too much this week.

May 7&8 - more manure this weekend, and both gardens all !!! Looking very good. Planted lettuce, carrots, beets, spinach, kale, swiss chard, mesclun mix, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, fennel, celeriac, stir fry mix, some other mixed greens, and 3 rows of yukon gold potatoes. I'm beat. Oh, and the Baltimore oriole returned to the orchard today. The apricot trees are in blossom, and everything else is ready to bloom in the orchard. Not many bees around - our own honey bees might be the next big project (next year).

May 9 - set out 75 new strawberry plants; 75 more to go! The nectarines trees blossomed.

May 11 - plums blossomed.

May 13 - peaches blossomed. Peas are already coming up in the garden, and radishes and also some mesclun. Full moon is the 17th - safe for corn and beans after that (the dreaded beans - they never end!)

May 15 - lettuce, spinach, radishes, broc, cabbage, cauliflowers, kale, and all mixes have sprouted. Set out onion plants. The cherry trees blossomed. There were 2 Canada geese in the back yard.

There you have it. Only half way through the month, and so much to report. We'll be back in a couple weeks with another update, and maybe pictures this time.

Seeing Green

The hoop house is a nice respite on blustery afternoons like we had today. The temp. in there is in the mid 80's, and when the sun is out, even warmer. Everywhere you look, it's green.

We're still waiting to get in the gardens, where a lot of this stuff in trays can be transplanted.

And the overflow outside.

Some will be for sale at the farm stand, like these hanging tomato baskets.

In the meantime, we offer fresh herbs

lettuces

and radish

at the farm stand, with spinach

and carrots

not far behind.

Somewhere in there are also cucumber plants, where the netting is

and the tomato plants are staked ready to grow. I think there are even peas in there, all intended to be early season.

I can not take credit for any of this. It is all the hard work and dedication of our mother, who has done this type of thing for as long as I can remember. All those years she did it to sustain her family, and now she does it to sustain yours. Thanks for your hard work Mom....& Happy Mother's Day a little early too.