Greetings from Club Tropicana!
Not really. But it sure feels tropical out there. It's 26 degrees as I type this at 5:00 PM. It has been in the low-to-mid 20s all week and it is forecast to remain so until the weekend. There wasn't a cloud in the sky today.
Yesterday, I began weeding and turning the raised beds in earnest and also worked some manure and kelp into the smaller beds. Onion sets were planted, too.
Today, the weeding/bed-turning/poo-incorporating continued. R. dug out one of the large raised beds (the second one from the house). We put rotting chunks of the trunk of a fallen birch tree in the bottom of the bed and covered them with material from the compost bin before dumping the soil back into the bed. (Aside: the material from the compost bin was not at all composted. It was so hot and dry last summer and the summer before that most of what was in the compost bin ended up being dehydrated rather than breaking down. For example, the carrot tops were still green and had maintained their frilly form, but were crispy.)
Tomorrow, we will spot-weed the south garden in preparation for planting potatoes (which, if the temperatures hold, we could do any time now). R. will till that garden as well. I splurged on a package of 5 dahlia tubers this week. When I began gardening, the packages were around $8.99 for 5 tubers. Now, they are $19.99! Despite two attempts, I have not mastered the technique of overwintering dahlia tubers. Considering the current price of them, maybe I should try again this Fall.
The garlic began emerging on April 30th. Most of it is up, now, including many of the bulbils that were planted in pots. That's 2 weeks earlier than usual. They are loving this sunshine.
The trees and current bush are all budding. While turning the raised beds, I found 3 onions and 3 sprouting garlic cloves. Buried treasure. The kitties, now in their middle age, are spending most of their days indoors, snoozing. They occasionally come out to supervise us from the shade of the nearest tree. I started strawflowers, cosmos, and calendula to eventually plant out in the garden. They will love having tall flower patches to sleep in come August.
Kitty enjoying the warm soil...
