Serviceberry and The Rambunctious Raspberry

Our Serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea) is leafing out and will be flowering soon. The flowers will turn into blueberry like berries in the summer. This is a great shrub and will grow into a tree if given the right conditions. It has been known to reach over 60 ft in height. I plan on putting more Serviceberry in the front yard, which I am slowly turning into a food forest. 

I bought 6 flats of strawberries at the local box store on clearance last year. They are apparently very cold hardy because I did not mulch them at all. They came through the winter looking this good. 

Here are some bunching onions that had no problem overwintering in one of our raised beds. I got some egyptian walking onion seed this year and plan on letting it go in the yard. 

We love leeks. These two did just fine through the winter. A quick tip: when you go to harvest leeks, green onions or celery just cut the plant off at ground level, leaving the roots and the bottom of the plant in the ground. In the case of leeks, you will see the rings turn green and start to push up. This will eventually grow into another leek for you. You can do this many times. I am not sure how many, but I have not had one not grow back yet.

Thyme is a very hardy perennial. I am going to move it out of this raised bed and give it a permanent home nearby. We made the mistake of planting some perennials in our raised beds that would be better suited for annual food crops. 

This is horseradish. I ate some last year and it is very spicy. If you really want to process a lot of horseradish you should use a food processor to shred it and then change the blade out to puree the shredded root. Add salt and vinegar and you will have some wonderful horseradish. This can be stored in a sterile jar in the fridge for up to three months. 

We inherited a thornless red raspberry plant from our good friends Mike and Heather. This thing went crazy in their backyard and they were tired of cutting it back. They had a huge pile of canes they cut down in the corner of their yard. I have planted it in an area that I want it to go crazy. I can't wait to get some raspberries. This picture was taken four days after I planted it. I don't think they were exaggerating about its vigour. 

Waiting for Spring

Rain, snow, ice, sun, snow, sun, rain, sun. This is a day in the life of an Ohio resident. My yard has been completely water-logged, then dry, then frozen all in one week. I planted one hundred and fifty peas a couple weeks ago when the ground was perfect and the temps were mild. I am glad the peas knew better than me and did not germinate. Three days after I planted them they were under two inches of snow. I heard the spring peepers, so that is my excuse. =) 

So while spring and winter fight it out, we are moving forward with the garden preps. Below is an update on the plants we started indoors a few weeks ago.

The top row is mostly tomatoes. They are doing well. We are still having some germinate, but even if no more came up, our germination rate would be good. 

Here is a close up of some tomatoes. I really like these smaller bins. It makes moving and rearranging the plants so much easier.

I recently had to raise the lights up. These tomatoes are growing fast. Smells like summer every time I touch one.  

This is an experiment. I collected hundreds of Allium seeds at the end of last summer. I broadcast seeded these two bins with the collected seeds, a mix of leeks, red onion and green onion. I also had a bunch of Brassica seeds in the bottom of a bag and decided to throw them in as well. 

I am not sure what is growing, could be broccoli, cauliflower or cabbage. The plan is to pull them out soon and transplant them into peat pots to plant in the garden as soon as possible. The soil is very sandy, the mix is 1/3 compost 1/3 sand 1/3 peat moss. Once the Brassica's are out I will let the onions grow to "set" size and transplant them into the garden.

Here are some cabbages. As soon as these go in the ground I plan on planting more from seed directly in the garden. We eat a lot of cabbage so, in my opinion, you can't grow enough.

This bin is full of odds and ends. There is Walking stick kale, tobacco for pesticide, cabbages, broccoli, salt bush and some volunteer Curcubit that didn't germinate last year but did this year. These soil cubes are left over from last year.  

This bin has various flowers like cosmos and zinnia. You can tell these are left over soil cubes from last year due to the moss growing on them. 

The full set-up. I am so excited to get back in the garden. Every year we have done a better job and learned many new things. We will have garlic this year and we can harvest our three year old asparagus patch. Can't wait!

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.