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| over-wintered radish greens ready to harvest to add to soups |
For the past 2 weeks, I've tried to get outside to the vegetable garden for an hour or two each day. I still have a lot of work to do before April begins. I'm filling a bed with soil and compost so I can transplant 2 blueberry bushes this spring before the growing season begins. Several years ago, we planted 4 blueberry bushes where we thought they'd do well. Turns out that wasn't a good spot after all (too far from the main garden so I couldn't keep an eye of the bushes for water and birds). Last spring, my husband built a raised bed near the vegetable and berry garden. I filled one-third of the bed with soil and compost, mounded to one side, then transplanted one of the blueberry bushes. It did well over the summer and winter, so this year I'm moving 2 of the other bushes over to that bed. The 4th bush will go near the other 4 bushes that we have planted and have done well over the years, but maybe not until next year when I can get a spot prepared. Anyways, I'm moving soil and compost for the blueberry bed.
I'm also preparing a potato bed this week. I've grown potatoes for the last 15 years, saving some from each year to use as seed in the next. Well, at the end of last fall, I felt like I'm getting too old to be out digging potatoes for hours in the cold and wet weather we have in fall. I thought I would be done growing potatoes. My plan for vegetable gardening was to only do simple plants from here on out. Guess I was wrong on that plan.
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| over-wintered kale to stir fry or add to salads |
Anyway, I've been thinking about how important this year's vegetable and fruit garden will be. I expect there will be some inflation on food in the coming months. If ever there was a time to vegetable garden, this summer is it. Gardening will provide my family with fresh produce even if I can't get out to a store for months or even if produce prices are higher than normal. So, I decided to grow potatoes after all this year. The problem is since I thought I wouldn't grow potatoes again, I told my husband to go ahead and use any of the potatoes that I dug last fall in cooking. Men love their potatoes, right?
Well, thankfully, my husband doesn't listen to me. When I was cleaning in the garage 2 weeks ago, I found a bucket of seed potatoes from last fall! So, I've been working my tail off getting a bed ready for them. Since we weren't going to grow potatoes again (or so I thought), we put a walkway where the potatoes used to grow, so we could get to the raspberries without walking all around the garden.
In addition to raspberries, we grow a lot of strawberries each summer, here. I have 5 dedicated beds for them. Last week, I moved all of the strawberry plants out of one bed and into the other 4 beds, so I could use that one bed for my found seed potatoes.
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| six itty bitty tomato plants from those seeds I started a month ago |
I really thought I'd be taking it easier in springs and summers, as far as vegetable gardening goes. Despite the hard physical work, I am grateful that we have this space so I can grow a large part of our produce. I encourage anyone who has sunny garden space to plant a few seeds this spring and summer. There are so many things that we can't control with COVID19. Growing some of our own veggies is something that many of us can do. Not only could it save us some money on fresh produce, but also, by not buying as much produce ourselves, we could ease the possible tight supply of produce in the markets enough so that others who can't garden could find more affordable produce for themselves in the stores.
