Farm and Garden Weekly - week of March 28

This week I ordered seeds and plants for the vegetable garden. If you enjoy reading gardening literature, you'll know that most every piece of writing talks about seed catalogues; the joy of seeing them come in the mail in winter, the fun of going through them all and choosing your seeds or plants. Well, not me. I've been thinking about this a lot. Even when we first started gardening in 1973, and we'd pore over catalogues and make garden design graphs, it just felt like this was what we were 'supposed' to do. And all it did was give me anxiety. Too many choices, too much planning, too little fun. As the years have gone on, we've given up the plans. I don't look through a zillion catalogues anymore. I decide which companies I'm going to buy from and go online and order. And with our new raised beds the whole process is even simpler. We have only eight. One is for garlic which we plant in the fall. It is not a permanent bed - we change it each year. So that leaves seven beds to plant in. Last year we had quite a few flowers interspersed and while they were lovely, they did cut down on the food component. We have plenty of other places to grow flowers so this year those raised beds are just for vegetables.

Sadly, I've given up growing peas. It is a lot of work and takes up a whole bed for maybe four meals a year. I dearly love those four meals, but the practical side of me says, let's try buying them at the Farmers' Market and use that space more efficiently.

We've also given up our seed-starting venture. Again, too much work. The plants were never big enough when it was time to put them into the garden. I'd rather spend a bit more money and buy plants. I ordered onion sets and leek plants from Johnny's. I also get my summer squash/zucchini from there because this is the only place I can find Zephyr squash, my very favorite. I got Renegade spinach from there, along with Skyphos butterhead lettuce, and another I of course had to buy, Nancy's butterhead lettuce. They will send my Music garlic in the fall.

In addition to Johnny's, I bought three packets of seeds from Renee's Garden: French Gold yellow beans, Sunshine orange and yellow carrots, and Merveille De Quatre Saisons lettuce, an old favorite of ours.

My scheme for the beds is:
spinach and carrots
onion sets
leek plants
Zephyr squash
yellow beans
lettuce (in the chive bed)

I'm planning to buy some local tomato plants for another bed, and may put basil and parsley with it. The eighth bed is the aforementioned garlic.

The garlic which we planted in October is up

And the perennial chives have grown so much we'll be having them on potato loaf for supper tonight.

I've begun raking flower gardens in this warm, sunny spring weather, and will hoe up any weeds in the raised beds soon. We'll put in some rotted manure, and we're on our way!

The 'constant song sparrow' is back. I saw a phoebe flying into one of the nesting boxes under the eaves of the barn this morning. We've taken down the bird feeders since the local bears have come out of their winter homes. I posted about the situation two years ago. Last year when we came back after a day away, the bears had visited again, so this year we took them down before the bears showed up.

Lastly, we've heard the wood frogs in a couple areas where water collects on the farm. These are called vernal pools. They aren't really ponds because they dry up in summer, but they offer water for frogs in the spring. This is what the frogs sound like. And here is the little fellow.

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