What I’ve Been Up to This Week

A week spent mostly on garden work, but I did seasonal chores early in the week.

Sunday while the guys cut tree limbs a helper friend and I washed more windows and put in screens. I also was washing all the winter outside clothes in preparation to put them away on Tuesday. Two days of window washing totally wiped me out.

So on Monday I slept between loads of laundry to be ready to put things away on Tuesday.

Tuesday my helper friend and I changed out the winter clothes for the summer things.

Wednesday I went out and raked up the mess from the limb removal and put the fence back up. It had come through undamaged.

Then I set about removing the hundreds and hundreds of catalpa pods from the Big garden. That took the rest of the day and some of Thursday.

Wednesday was also our anniversary and my husband picked this tiny bouquet of the flowers I had in my wedding bouquet and in my hair.

Onions planted

On Thursday my helper friend was here and we planted 5 26’ rows of onions. There were to be 3 rows of Walla Walla Sweet seedlings and 2 rows of Cortland storage onions.

While I was cleaning out the garden, my helper friend removed the mulch from the whole onion area and prepped the soil. Then we both started planting seedlings. I discovered somehow I miscalculated and was short ½ row of Walla Walla Sweet seedlings. I put the remaining Cortlands in and planned to put any extra leeks in too. We started mulching the seedlings until he had to leave and I continued putting mulch down.

Onions mulched

At one point I looked up and there’s Momma bear and her 2 cubs over by the picnic table. I mulch kneeling down and one of the cubs thought I was interesting. So I got up and went over and closed the gate. He thought I was much less interesting standing up. By the time I’d gotten back to my row to mulch, they had disappeared.

So I continued mulching and a gray SUV comes up the driveway. She wanted to know if I knew the bears were in my side yard. She’d seen them, and me out in the garden, not acting alarmed. I said I’d seen them and closed the gate. So I guess they were still in the yard but on the other side of the house. I finally got the mulching done and quit for the day.

Potato bed planted

On Friday my helper friend was here and removed the mulch where the potato bed was going in and prepped the soil. Then he planted the potatoes I had chitted weeks earlier and prepped the day before. We decided not to mulch as he had forgotten to mark where the potatoes were. We’ll wait until they’ve come up a little and mulch then.

Mesclun starts

In the meantime, I had finished cleaning out the winter/catalpa mess from the rest of the garden and prepped the soil and planted, then mulched leeks. The next job was prepping the bed for the mesclun starts. We got those planted and mulched.

You can see how the weeds come up when there’s not enough mulch.

I then decided to mulch the walkway which I had just finished weeding. It had not had mulch last year and the weeds would come back quickly. So we mulched the part that didn’t have any at all, saving what mulch I have left for the New Herb garden.

Walkway mulched, laying out garden

Our next job was laying out the rest of the Big garden. We got that about ½ done when it was time for him to go. I stayed out there and pulled up the markers for the garlic and moved mulch off the ones that couldn’t make their way through. There were 14 of these out of 200+ plants.

Friday, May 11th, was a sort of sad day, as it was the first day I had not posted to Steemit since February 3rd. But I had no more backup posts written and was too tired to make any.

Here’s photos of the veg garden and flowering things I saw this week:

Comfrey

Horehound

I found 3 of the 8 horehound plants had survived the winter and the mice.

Rhubarb

Crabapple

Crabapple flowers

East lilacs

Dwarf comfrey under the McIntosh tree

Comfrey flowers

Quince in flower

Tiny daffodils in the Bulkhead garden

It was to rain all day on Saturday so I planned to make lilac, violet, and daffodil jellys. I went out after supper and picked the flowers because if the rain came early, they’d be splashed with mud.

As I was picking violets I found 2 new hybrids: striped white and freckled purple. (I posted about them here: https://steemit.com/gardening/@goldenoakfarm/the-violets-of-golden-oak-farm )

I needed 4 cups of violet flowers for 2 batches of jelly, 2 cups of lilac flowers for 1 batch and 3 cups of dandelion flowers for 1 batch. By the time I had collected all of them, the dandelions had started to close up for the night. It was 10 PM by the time I got all the flowers processed for the next day’s start.

Left – right: violet (2 rows), lilac (2 rows), dandelion

On Saturday I spent all day making jelly. They came out with pretty colors and the lilac was delicately scented. I decided to use up the lilac flowers, which I had stored in the fridge, and make 2 more batches. So I processed those for an early start on Sunday.

So that was my week.