What have you done today in the Garden?

I got the tractor ready last night and had planned to mow the field today, but woke up to a dreary, overcast, rainy day so all I've managed to do is walk out to the garden during a short break in the rain and do my weekly assessment of the sunflowers. I've been keeping weekly records on my GardenStew blog and this will be week 7. They are up to 20 inches tall now and I'm looking forward to seeing those big, golden blooms soon.

 

Husband mowed the paths to the pond, and then weed-whacked the front yard edges. This afternoon we mowed the back yard (joint effort) and hauled the grass clippings to the chicken coop. We have very happy hens!
I got more squash planted, and the second planting of cucumbers in. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the weather cooperates, and that we have plenty of squash and cukes for the food pantry.

 

I went out and walked in the snow. dooley

 

Kevin finished up pruning the fruit trees and grapes. I worked in the greenhouses all day, pinching petunias that I started from seed in Jan. I have had a few disasters this Spring already from being away from the greenhouse too long and cooked the new seeds ( like maybe 2000 seeds or more), so I made what I was pinching into cuttings for flats of petunias. I will just have to make do with a few less this year then I had planned. My impatiens were pretty much a waste of seeds. I cooked them, too. The peppers? another disaster. I had to go buy new seeds and bought almost all heirlooms peppers..this time. at least most of the next crop started emerging today. they will be smaller than I like for May... oh well. Tomatoes are all up and almost ready to transplant. I started moving them to the big greenhouse where they will be planted next week.

 

My tomatoes are up! A few more days and I will move them to bigger pots. It snowed again last night, so it will be a while until I get to play in the garden.

 

The yard finally dried enough today for us to be able to weed and mulch our small blue berry bushes we got last fall. They wintered fine and are full of baby blue berries. We cut and bent some chicken wire to cover them and didn't get the fourth one mulched cause of a big fire ant pile that was right in the bush. Hadda poisen the ants so we could weed and mulch it tomorrow we managed to get that much done with our getting our knees too wet. Should be able to mow by tuesday IF it dont rain.

 

Today was the day to dig the spud furrows. Most folks here think that the spuds are in the mounded sides.

I had a look in the queenless hive to see if Her Majesty had been released.

You can see that the little cage is empty. I looked on a couple of frames to see if I would see her walking about...but then I was stung by one of these little heifers and decided to just wait until she had actually had the time to lay a few eggs. I shall look again over eight days or so.

When they are queenless they can be very irritable because of this situation (there are other factors that can cause this as well, of course).

I wore some garden gloves when working in the bees, but the workster just pricked me right through the thin cloth of the glove that covered the back of my hand. It has puffed-up nicely now, thank you very much.

I continued weeding and I also planted some dahlia's today. Placed some of the potato bed mulch in the compost bins and the rest I brought home to go in the green can to be picked up in the morning.

 

It did get done, Toni.

What sorts of things are you going to do in that wild strawberry patch? Nothin' like a project to keep you outta trouble, eh?

 

It is raining like mad outside. Not letting the blues get me down though---I went a-planting.
2 sorts of Cosmea, Bryonia, Norwegian Brem, Sprouts, Pak Choi and two types of Tagetes. The bedroom windowsill is almost completely full.

I have other flowering plants to get into the ground in the lottie, but this darn rain.....I will be saying along about july-august--"Hey rain, where are you now when I need you"?

Oh well, the spud trenches are becoming nice and moist. I hope that doesn't work against me later on.

 

Woooo hooooo got to mow yesterday but it took all day and left me pooped guess I better get back in mowing shape. All kind of wonderful things in the yard. Citrus blooming baby fruits all over and our baby pecan tree (bout 4 ft tall) has blooms in it!! Found another surprise but I will try to video document it. If it works you will be among the first to know

 

We finally had a nice warm day so I was able to do a little re-arranging in my front flower bed. I removed 2 red twigged dogwoods that was a pain to keep trimmed and replaced it with pink flowering potentillas, divided an over-grown scabiuos and replanted the new plants. It felt sooo good to be out in the sun and working with my flowers!

 

I am going to need a baler pretty soon. We can't get the grass mowed and we have snow in the forecast. the grass is 4-6" high in spots. can't get on it to mow it because it is too wet and the mower slides and peels the sod off. So, the only thing happening around here is greenhouse stuff. transplanting tomatoes today and a few peppers, moved a few hanging baskets to empty spots in the big greenhouse and watering only what is showing stress from dry...

 

Snow in the forecast for us again too. Looks like I'm going to have to limit my gardening to indoors. Not impressed Mother Nature!