With the nice weather holding steady, we decided to do a little more work in the garden. I’m hoping that by properly planting things in some waves based on the temperatures they prefer, that we will not only have good harvests, but I will not feel overwhelmed getting everything in all at once.

As you know, we have already planted some of our early spring plants like potatoes, onions, beets, carrots, lettuce and kale. I had wanted to also plant peas, but ran out of time before we headed on a little vacation through some lovely back roads in BC. We had a lot of fun and saw some really cool sites.

Once back, it was time to do some more gardening though. I got the peas into the garden, but realized that I would need to add a trellis. So I put together a wood frame the length of the planting area. I decided instead of attaching netting, that I would try the twine wrap around the frame as the peas grow. I am hoping this will be an easier cleanup at a later date.

I, of course, didn’t really pay attention to the wood I was using, and realized after hammering it into the ground that it is a little wobbly and will be unlikely to hold the weight of the plants. So I added some little braces, screwed into some posts on the other side of the bricks. It is still a bit wobbly, but much better. If it does seem like it is not sturdy as the plants grow, I will just tie off the top to the fence. If it is going to tip, it will be into the garden bed and not towards the fence.

As with most things in the garden, this little project, led to other projects or tasks that needed to be done to accomplish completing this project. The main task being getting rid of many of the weeds that have sprung up in the last week or so. Once I started the area that I was working in, I got side tracked with weeding both the beds on that side of the yard, as well as the larger weeds up the path along the fence and around the pool area.

While I was working on these two tasks, Kurt was working on the strawberry bed. We decided it was time to cut away all the dead parts that had wintered to keep the plants warm, essentially using the plant itself as a mulch for the roots. Since lots of new, green growth was showing, we wanted to expose it to the sunlight.

Kurt did a great job of getting the very messy looking bed into a tidy and clean order. It looks like there are only 2 plants that didn’t make it, which is a really low number! Usually we have to replace quite a few more. We figure we will let a few of the plants grow some runners and once big enough, transplant them into the 2 spaces.

Another project that I recently did was due to our herbs springing back to life. I noticed that quite a bit of oregano seemed to be coming up in amongst all my thyme, so I decided I had better put a few dividers in to try to keep the herbs from overrunning each other. I had done this with the Tarragon since I had read that it can spread quite rapidly and it had worked great.

I had noticed some oregano spread in the fall, so I already had this task in the back of my mind as spring has started to fully come around. Luckily, the soil is still quite damp, so it was easy to create little trenches where the dividers needed to go with minimal disruption to the plants roots, though I did have to hack out some of the oregano roots, which were most definitely spreading in all directions.

It will make for a better herb garden, and actually opened the space up a bit, providing more room for the thyme and basil sections. I will move the rosemary over to the larger bed with the lettuce, kale and cilantro plants.

I will transplant the broccoli and cauliflower outside in the next week. They all have 6 true leaves on them, and the temperatures are over 10*C during the day and above freezing at night. I will put them out on the deck in the afternoons until dark to harden them off before setting them in.

I will also need to transplant the tomatoes and peppers into larger containers. They are all doing really great, so I don’t want to risk them becoming root bound.

The Basil will likely go outside as well around the end of the month. They area all also standing tall and looking good, so I would like to get them into the permanent bed as soon as the temperature is right for it.

All in all, it has been a productive week off, with some work in the garden getting done as well as some fun adventuring!