What's growing, early harvest.

Now that spring is here, i have not been blogging as often as i would like to be. i have been busy in the garden, taking pictures and chasing butterflies. :) Most folks in our area do not plant their gardens until Memorial day, the exception being that peas and potatoes can go in on Good Friday. i always have a difficult time following this rule, as soon as the sun comes out i am ready to start digging!
Every year i try to stretch our growing season as much as possible.

This lovely Swiss Chard was planted in the fall, and managed to survive an unseasonably cold winter. We have already begun to harvest it.


Our lettuces, carrots, onions and spinach were also planted in the fall, and are doing great. We've been enjoying fresh organic salads for several weeks now.


Asparagus and rhubarb were a few of our first harvests early this spring. When my mom was here visiting, we gathered enough asparagus for dinner, and she made a delicious rhubarb crisp.


Peach trees, apple trees, blueberries and strawberries are in full bloom. Our berry patches are spreading like crazy, i've been digging up runners to transplant and give away to neighbors and friends..

i've been working on transplanting our strawberries into a new bed. They took over the area they were in, but i can not keep the chickens out of them. So i'm moving them closer to the house, into a smaller area that i can keep covered with poultry netting and regulate the water a little better. i'm excited to see how they do. The plants look great and they are flowering and full of green fruit.

We planted our peas and potaotes on Good Friday, as all the locals advise. We planted 50lbs of red potatoes again this year, and are still eating potatoes from last years garden! They stored well over the winter down in the basement.
i'm eager to plant sweet pototes again, we got a great crop last year and they are such a beautiful plant to grow. We just need to work on our storage method. i don't think we 'hardened' them correctly, and they ended up rotting in storage. It may just be that it was an extremely cold winter,but we lost over 40lbs of sweet potatoes.

We have our broccoli planted, and are harvesting spinach, kale and arugala now. i'm am eager to get more things in the ground, but have learned my lesson from years past. So i am trying really hard to be patient. :) The kids have been helping me get our seeds started, and they will have their own garden again this year.

You may have noticed i've been slacking on our family blog. i will probably be combining the two eventually, as trying to keep up with both is too time consuming. So you will probably be seeing more personal blogs here, and lots of pictures of course. i will still be posting about crafting, and featuring other artists as well.