And a stroll through the garden
Yesterday, I posted
about how
the woody perennials are coming along. Although less
riveting, the vegetable garden is definitely springing to life as well.
Of course, perennials
and over-winterers wake up long before new seedlings make much of a
showing. I've been concerned that my mineral-burned
strawberries were
worse-off 
than I'd first estimated, but
it turns out they've simply been running slowly just like everything
else this year. At long last, new leaves are finally starting to
turn the strawberry beds green, although flower buds aren't yet evident.
Rhubarb is also growing
quickly, with stems nearly big enough to eat. And I found two
beautiful spears in asparagus
alley --- too bad
those plants were started from seed last year and are off limits for
picking until 2014. Hopefully the older (but more shaded)
asparagus plants will start popping up soon.
The most obvious feature
about the rest of the vegetable garden is the grain (probably rye) that
came along for the ride in last year's straw mulch. Mark will
have to mow the aisles next week simply to whack back the grain along
the bed edges, even though the grass isn't really tall enough to need
it. I've been pulling out grain plants in the beds themselves,
which is easy in moist soil.
And even though I probably
shouldn't find it exciting, I'm even happy to see the first summer
weeds sprouting. Jewelweed (above) will probably be nipped by a
late frost, but it clearly thinks the soil is warm enough to
gamble. My planted seeds (like the Swiss chard to the right)
agree and are popping up right and left.
My main task in the
vegetable garden in April is weeding and refreshing mulch, which is
going much more quickly this year than previously. Three
man-hours resulted in 34 beds of garlic, Egyptian onions, herbs, and
strawberries weeded, and then another hour added enough new straw to
carry them through until summer. At this time of year, it's a
pleasure to be sinking my hands into the earth, but speedy weeding does
give me more time to experiment with other projects.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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