Spring Update

Here are some pictures to illustrate what has been going on in our indoor and outdoor gardens. It's been going fairly slow the last couple months (hence, no posts). Primarily within the last week, the majority of our snow has melted and we've seen signs of life in some of our perennials and trees.

Our cherry trees are starting to put out some buds.


The lupine is starting to wake up. We didn't get to prune things last fall since the snow surprised us in October and hung around until just a few days ago. I will be cleaning up the garden this weekend and getting it ready for spring.


We planted a winter green manure mix last fall, but it didn't have time to grow. I'm happy to see that as the snow recedes, the seeds are finally germinating (5.5 months later!). Hopefully we can till this in by June 1st and have some extra organic matter added to the soil. With the green manure and the actual manure from last fall, our soil should be significantly improved this summer.


Clover did manage to germinate in the fall. It doesn't look like 2 1/2 feet of snow and -12 degree temperatures this winter even phased it!


There is still a foot of snow in some parts of the garden. When I look at the garden right now it looks like a wet, soggy, sloppy, depressing mess. It's hard to believe that we'll have it completely planted in two months.


Bulbs are starting to bloom in the perennial flower bed in front of the house. I planted the bulbs somewhat haphazardly last fall. Now I am thinking that this bed could use some evergreen plants as anchors so that spring looks a bit more green.


The rhubarb is my pride in the greenhouse. Hmmm.. how much longer until I can chop this down and bake a pie???


The chrysanthemum and coreopsis cuttings that I took in the fall are almost all grown up. They're relaxing in the greenhouse until I get brave enough to plant them outside. Maybe 4 weeks or so?


Also in the greenhouse, the peppermint, oregano, lavender, chives, and sage have all started to wake up. Below is the peppermint.


Inside the house, the germination and propagation station is cooking. Below are broccoli, arugula, chard and shallot seedlings for planting outside in about a month.

Tomato seedlings are a bit farther along. Some of these will be kept in the solarium and some will be planted into the greenhouse. Despite starting things fairly early (Jan 1st), the seedlings are still small. They had some difficulty with aphids which stunted their growth. This was dealt with by spraying the seedlings regularly with neem oil and a dish soap mixture.

The citrus trees have bloomed and have set fruit. A few weeks ago we noticed signs of scale and spider mites on these trees. Each tree got a sponge/toothbrush bath with diluted dish soap to remove the scale and webbing. Then they were sprayed down with neem oil. I might repeat this process again in a couple weeks. The scale is started to slowly come back, but the trees still look very healthy. At the same time that I cleaned them up, they were also fertilized with blood meal, bone meal and some beet root liquid fertilizer.