The Productive Backyard, Winter to Spring, 2010

[Nancy]

Glad I decided to hold off on any planting it's just too cold yet hear and
today it's hailing again had some last week too, 33* is in the forecast over night this week.

[Harmony]

We are watching DIY tonight, the show where the guy stops shoppers in a store like H. Depot and offers to come do landscaping. Tonight's show he shows up at their house with a whole crew of landscapers to build waterfalls, and all sorts of other stuff, fencing.

I told DH if he ever sees that guy say YES immediately, stop what he's doing and BRING HIM HOME. We surely needed help this afternoon.

I managed to dig out an asparagus fern that had spread and taken over more than 1/2 of my front garden. Lesson learned: pereniels (sp?) are nice but they keep growing and need divided sometimes.

[Nancy]

Harmony I know what show you are talking about!
Love what you told your hubby!

We worked in the yard today h. got the mower fired up and ready to go,
not such good luck with the weed wacker.
I did the mowing he changed the oil in it.
I moved some dirt from where we got the tree out last year;
and put it in the garden spot. Both places are more level now yea.
Found grass seed so that's great news.
H. sprayed the front gravel, and put the last of the weed & feed on too.
Then he went for a mc ride, while I pruned the roses up.
Moved some onion sets and bulbs and got a bag of weeds out of the beds.

It felt like a very productive day here!
SO glad we did this today b/c tomorrow there are strong winds headed our way.

[Harriet]

Our little flock of hens is thinning a bit, as is normal for chickens. These are headed for their 2nd year, so are literally "not spring chickens any more". We have lost another hen, a very healthy one who just keeled over in sudden distress. We think it is too early for snakes to be crawling much, so I wonder if she ate something that choked her - just a hunch. Neighbors' hens about a half-mile away have been falling prey to fox and hawk, but our "Fort Knox" HRH built, plus Sammie, has kept that problem away from us. At any rate, we are getting 4 to 5 eggs a day which signals a nice healthy spring here.

[Harmony]

How long do hens usually live, Harriet? I think we had ours several years or more, though production went down along the way.

Gardening is such good exercise, don't you think, Nancy?

Here's what I've been working on:
Friday evening picked up bunch of plants and planted in the half-empty bed at older house. About 10 little plants.

Sat. I went to a couple stores and bought one big flat bed hand truck full of plants then went back for 50# bag of black cow. Nice sales associate loaded it into my car, but I had to get it out and I wheeled it around the side of house with our hand dolly. I weeded alongside the house about half-way back, fertilized that area. I moved a couple little brocoli plants and a couple pepper plants into the veggie garden. I trimmed some of the veggies still growing there.

I planted: 3 pacific junipers, 3 indian hawthorne, 1 azalea, 1 geranium in the porch pot. I raked the side yard of all the weeds I threw out there and watered all the new plants and others out front. DH put new mulch across the front yesterday but he didn't clean off the curbing.

I have 1 xanadu to plant and 3 hostas to go in on the shady side by the shop. When I took DH's lunch over to him I cleared out the new plants I planted over there from the new mulch DH spread in the bed. He half covered them! Also took another bag of mulch and spread it around the bird-of-paradise I trimmed up.

Looking much better, still lots to do.

[Nancy]

Harmony yes I agree gardening is great exercise!
Got some bulbs dug up out of the garden spot we had last year and moved them to the place I
wanted them this year. Got a branch trimmed back from the apple tree it's in bloom and so pretty
this time of year. Still too soon to plant much but we've been getting some prep. work done so that helps.

[Dove]

Planted all my veggie seeds last week. Everything is in containers on the deck because of the deer who think my plants are their personal free buffet. Last year they ate every tulip bud before they bloomed, plus the zucchini I planted right under the deck.

This year dh sprayed some kind of foul deer repellant on the tulips & I am finally getting to enjoy them . Squirrels took several of the bulbs soon after I planted last fall (or was it the year before?? can't remember now), but at least flowers are still spread out all over the bed. Would look funny if they had removed all the bulbs from just one side.

This year I'm growing tomatos, both beefsteak & bite-sized, lettuce, cucumber, zucchini, & peppers. Looking forward to some delicious salads .

Still need to mulch some areas & plant geraniums & maybe petunias, but will wait until next month for that.

[Nancy]

Got some tomato plants today,
they are inside for now I watered them.
Next I need to write a list of a few seed packets to get.

I got the tomatoes re-potted and
they are out soaking up some sun today.
[I'll bring them in tonight.]

[Harmony]

Dove, when we were up north we used to put blood meal around our plants so the bunnies wouldn't come in and eat up all the salad. Never had deer, though something ate every one of my pea pods in the fall.

I got the 3 hostas planted and the xanadu is in now too. DH put the mulch in those spots. People are fixing up their gardens down here now but I still see a lot of winter damage around. Especially on all the empty houses (forclosures). The store had a big sign telling which plants were cold hardy. We lost a lot of stuff around here this winter. Everything I planted is hardy either to 10° or down to -30°. We better never get that cold!

Friday April 16th, I went to a couple stores tonight and got some plants to put in. I'm about half-way around the foundation doing my plantings so far. DH got some more mulch and we put it down in our front island around the amarylis. We put the weed cloth in the area around the house I've planted and used the rest of the mulch there. It's looking pretty good. Lots of bare spots in between, but if everything grows like it should it'll fill everything in.

[Harmony]

More work done today.

Took down the bean trellis DH and I built. It went up with power tools and 2 people. I couldn't find the power tools. I disassembled it with a screw driver and sheer will power. It took a couple hours at least.

Much pruning and weeding done in the veggie garden. I cultivated around all the existing plants there, moved the last 3 peppers into the garden. I added a 50# bag of soil/fertilizer. Put big pkg of bush bean seeds in. And planted a tray of zucchini plants.

I didn't even get to the foundation plantings yet.