Spring Break

Break time, that is.

It may look like everything is still asleep out there, but things are getting organized. Over the winter the barn bedding has been mucked out twice onto the garden and covered with fresh leaves and straw. Sawdust has been produced for the blueberries and raspberries. The rhubarb is up. Most of last year's red russian kale shown here has now been dug up and some hung in the barn for the birds to play with, and some replanted in their pasture, ditto, and maybe it will survive to go to seed. I've kept one magnificent lacinato in the garden to watch through seed time. And I've divided and moved many clumps of garlic, some Egyptian onions, and chives.

In the greenhouse, there are fourteen flats of three and four inch pots. These I've been bringing out in a wooden tool caddy, randomized, a dozen at a time, hardening off, and planting in the far middle bed (Bed Number Four), just beyond the garlic patch and last year's leeks. There is a patch of peas and broadbeans. In any one spot you may find cauliflower, spinach, kale, bok choi, chard, beets, turnips, broccoli, cabbage, loose-leaf lettuce, or radishes. Three short rows, cross-bed, of carrots have been direct seeded. Bed Number Two, next door to the raspberries, has been sown to crimson clover and buckwheat, as it has been the least productive bed and we feel it needs a boost. Waiting in the wings are a second sowing of peas (sugar snap heirloom), a flat of storage onions, a flat of cilantro, some marigolds, statice, zinnias, and such.

I'm hoping to see some tomatoes come up in flats but no such luck so far. But we have a friend who does starts for a living -- we get her leftovers at a discount. Peppers, too. They come late in the season, but our soil warms slowly anyway.

White and crimson clover along with lime have been broadcast on the "someday pasture" and elsewhere.  Firewooding from the coppice is an ongoing project, and I hope to do some wattling this week.

Later, perhaps much later, the flats will be sown again, with green and yellow zukes, English cukes, winter squash, pumpkins, green beans, Scarlet Runners, and anything else we can get our hands on. I'll need to train up the kiwis and hops, work on the roof, and maybe start renovating a bathroom.

Hence the break.

Spud time

When the daffodils bloom, Risa plants potatoes. Our straw-grown spuds have produced progressively smaller crops of progressively smaller potatoes over the last half decade, so this year, we're experimenting with traditional rows of hilled spuds. A bed has been dedicated to this, so that's 150 row feet.

We have a small electric Mantis tiller, which is seldom used. We're having a dry spring -- most years, tilling has been unlikely in March, but right now the soil is right for this -- precipitation is down, as we are on the edge of the drought that California and eastern Oregon will likely experience this year. The bed was fluffed up, three trenches plowed out with the edge of a hoe, spuds laid on, and soil raked over them with a rake.

These spuds are very close together, but this is rich dirt. As the plants grow, we'll pile on soil (and, yes, straw) as best we can -- potatoes form better above the seed spud than beside or below.