The garden is slowly starting to come to life. Once summer is on it will look completely different. Just a few more days and it will officially be spring.

The rhubarb starts that my mom gave me last year are up already. I gave them a shot of Steve Solomon’s complete organic fertilizer mix to help boost them. Since this will be their second year, I’m hoping that with improved soil nutrition I will really see a difference in the plant size. I see holes in their leaves already. Grrrrr. I thought that with poisonous leaves they would be left alone. Something is out to prove me wrong.

A lot of our fruit trees are blooming out. I am hopeful that all of them made it over the winter. Since we got the garden fenced and late night deer attacks have been stopped, I’m looking forward to a lot of second year growth on them.

My garlic still seems to be doing fairly well. This is good, as I only have two cloves of garlic left from last year’s harvest. Lee and I are super excited about our garlic this year as it was put in on time so we should have big cloves this summer. This is only the second year of growing garlic for us but I see this as being a staple in our garden from now on. We LOVE garlic over here. Best not to get too close to us. Okay, it’s not that bad. We are growing five varieties this year.

I did a bit of mowing around the fruit tree side of the garden. I would have just left it for the chickens to take care of, but there were some brambles growing in there that needed wiped out. While I was mowing Lee decided to get the chicken litter composting. What was once a hill of chicken litter became a flat non-hill after the chickens thunder-thighed their way through it. Once Lee finished mixing it up with various stuff, he put a tarp over it, and then realized the hens were not going to leave it alone. His solution was putting sticks all over the exposed edges to keep them out. It seems to be working so far and most likely causing the neighbors to scratch their heads over what exactly we are doing now.

The hens are having a ball in their new place. Since they have been in the garden, I have no longer seen any cucumber beetles. This is good and I have subsequently stopped having nightmares about those pesky bugs in my garden. We plan on blocking the chickens out of the garden as we plant. Otherwise, they are my current line of defense on the cucumber beetles until I get some guineas. Actually, I suppose I shouldn’t count my guineas before they hatch (arrive?). I have a book ordered on Gardening With Guineas that I need to read first. I want to see if I can incorporate them into my gardening to help with my bug problems.

Here is another gratuitous hen shot of my Golden Laced Wyandottes.

My only perennial herb that I have so far is Rosemary. Hey, I know, how can I only have one herb in my garden? Well you have to start somewhere! I hope to add a few more herbs this year. I planted it last year and it still seems to be okay. A few of the tops looked like they died back a few inches, but other tops on it look fine. So I am taking this as a “yes, I might just live” from it.

Lee decided that we needed to change the garden layout this year so the rows will run east to west. It was a tractor and sun related decision, so the blueberries that we planted last year needed to be moved. Mostly so they wouldn’t accidentally get wiped out if Lee does tractor exercises in the garden. It will probably stunt their growth somewhat so it’s better to do it now while they are still small. Lee got two of them moved and all the hens were helping out best they could (by getting in the way of course). They were positively sure that Lee needed their help in the whole process.

Last year a neighbor gave us a couple of tree starts that a friend gave him. One of those tree starts was a Bay Laural. I need to figure out a place to plant it. It came back to life in it’s pot so that made me happy. Hmm, does this mean that I really have two herb plants now even though it’s a tree? I do use bay leaves in a lot of my soups. The only thing that makes me nervous is that even though I was told it was a Bay Laural I am unsure if it is one of the safe kinds to eat.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 10:24 am and is filed under Gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.