Temperatures have gone as high as 77º this early March of 2016. No frost at night in over a week. Is this the new Spring here in New England? No, but it certainly feels just fine and we are able to do a lot of prep work for this year's garden.
The goal is to finally get control over the garden, where it really looks like a garden and produces some good, healthy food for the family. Of course, that has always been the goal, but it always seems as if the weeds win out and by the middle of July, the garden looks more like a jungle than a farm.
So, the tiller has been put to work, new raised beds have been created, which have been anointed "Jackson's Garden". Peas have already been planted in one of the raised beds and the others are prepped for transplants (broccoli, lettuce, spinach and radishes).
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| Jackson's Garden, with peas planted. They have not come up yet, as temps went below 32º a few nights during the last week. |
The new greenhouse, built last January to house the snowblower (which was only used twice the entire winter) has been converted to growing early peas and plantings for transplanting. The same for the "Kitchen Greenhouse, which has lots of lettuce, spinach and radish seeds planted.
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| The new greenhouse with peas coming up already on the left side and radishes on the right. |
It will still be quite some time before the real action starts, as we are sure the weather will return to normal later in the month and then April. So, no rush in getting warm weather plants out, other than getting seedlings ready to plant by May. Not with 4-8 inches of snow predicted for overnight tonight, March 20, 2016.
We stopped by the Agway store to pick up some peas and cucumber seeds and the store owner told me the warm weather had people coming in looking for tomato plants already. Well, as they say in the movies, "Not so fast". Maybe onions can go in a little earlier and the same with potatoes, but my little tomato seedlings don't even have their first real leaves yet and we have no expectations of having tomatoes in April.
In the meantime, we will continue our cleanup process and enjoying the comfortable warm days. Seedlings are starting to grow as well and they go out into the other greenhouse during the day and come back in at night.
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These are some of the early tomato varieties (4th of July and Money Maker)
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These are mostly cold crops, Lettuce, Bok Choy, Broccoli and a few tomatoes (Red Siberian)
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Some more Bok Choy, a new vegetable for this year.
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I finally put in some drip hoses for the large greenhouse, using 1/2" white tubing where there is no need for water. This has not been tested yet. And yes, that is carpeting in the middle of the isle. Helps keep the weeds out for the most part.
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| The two sections of the large greenhouse. Last year carrots, broccoli and tomatoes grew in here, but there was always an issue with the beds being too dry. Hopefully this new watering system will fix things. |
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