Spring Starts

Do you already have your spring starts going? The time is nigh, past nigh! I had to fight the urge to start my tomatoes and peppers in December. We planted our brassicas, tomatoes and peppers at the end of February this year.

What is that you ask? A dirt crab? A yeti fur-ball?  A comfrey root? Yes, you were right the third time. It is the Russian bocking 14 comfrey root to be precise. Symphytum x uplandicum for all the plant nerds. This cultivar is sterile, meaning it does not produce through seed. The only way to propagate this variety is through root cutting. It only takes a little bit of root to get a new plant, as many people who have tried to roto-till this plant to death have found out.

I potted up 48 comfrey starts all said and done. I will be giving most of them away to friends this year. I plan on planting about half of these around the property. I have comfrey in 5 spots around the property right now.

Here are some happy little brassica's growing in soil cubes. Here is a post I did on making soil cubes if you want to learn more.

Here are some tomato starts. We have peppers going as well. Hopefully this year we won't have the wet spring we had last year. We couldn't plant out our starts until mid May last year.

Here is the set-up this year. Looks very similar to the last three years. =) I can't wait to get out in the garden this year. We had poor garden performance last year, mostly our fault from neglect. We plan on paying more attention to the annuals this year as well as continuing to establish perennial plants that will produce with very little input. 

Get out and garden this year!

Garden Update (pics from a couple weeks ago!)

Here is a photo of the garden from the roof,
hopefully this will give a better perspective of the yard.

The cosmos I started from seed began blooming a couple weeks ago.

Here's a look down the side fence.
In front is the asparagus Patrick planted... pretty big already,
then sunflowers, peas and peppers (random I know),
next patch is amaranth and hopefully some quinoa soon.
Down further under some straw are a few peanut plants
and way far at the end is the compost pile with comfrey and
now squash and okra planted around it.

Along the back fence are the sand cherries, including the one
I ran over with the lawnmower even though Patrick told me I should
stay many yards away from anything we wanted to keep alive...

Ok, this is pretty sweet... Patrick heard on a podcast
(The Self Sufficient Homestead) you could cut the bottom off of a
leek and replant. Here it is! So far all the ones that have been
replanted are doing great. Hope they taste as good!

I spent a lot of time working out what plants would go where
in the garden and in a few places did some random things... just to see.
While everything is doing very well there are some things that
are doing much better, for instance, this cabbage.
This is the most diverse box and has some of the best plants.
Next year I think I will experiment with some of my own companion planting.