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.