Now that us northerners are finally seeing signs of our ice prisons starting to melt away, that means it’s time start getting the garden ready so I figured it was a good time to revive this one.

What’s everybody growing this year?

For fruits and veggies we have Cherokee purple tomatoes, Honeynut and butternut squashes, cucumbers, jalapeños, habaneros, blackberries and blue berries.

For herbs we’re doing basil, oregano, mint, dill, cilantro, parsley, cannabis, and chamomile.

Greens are cabbage, Romain lettuce, butter lettuce, and kale.

And the ornamentals/everything else will be cintronella, marigolds, milkweed, and a wildflower blend.

This coming week I’ll finally have a yard free of snow so I’ll be able to start prepping the garden beds.

We’ve got June bearing, ever bearing strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, peaches, apples, bell peppers and tomatoes this year, along with the perennial and annual flower beds. With some of the nice weather we’ve had already, we’ve been cleaning up the beds, laying out areas where we’ll put a new bed, getting all of them ready to add compost. We may be rushing things a bit but we are anxious to get things going. Last year, we started planting some annuals and bell peppers too early and a late season hard frost wiped out some of what we planted. We promised ourselves to be more patient this year, but I don’t know if we can stick to it or not.

These are our strawberry and raspberry raised beds that still need to be cleaned up. That 6’ white fence keeps out most of the critters that would eat up our plants.

My main perennial is a 4'x8' raised bed of Black Hawk Black Raspberries. One year the yield was enough to make two batches of Black Raspberry Port (4 cases total) - though usually it becomes seedless jam.

The other garden spots are getting

Baby Romaine

Yellow Zucchini

Green Zucchini

Roma Tomatos

Sweet Corn

Swiss Chard

Celery

Hanging baskets are getting

Garlic Chives

Strawberries

Sage

Oregano

Marigolds will be scattered through the ground-veggies for pest deterrent and a fine-mesh fence will keep the squirrels and deer out..

Raked out the flower gardens and most of the back yard yesterday, will break out the thatcher once it dries enough and do the front. I have most of the seedlings growing, Tom’s, bell peppers, onions, basil, parsley, and a lot of marigolds. Will wait till March to start all the squash. The only things out in the garden this early are the asparagus and garlic, a couple weeks till the peas go in. Last year I did the beets and peas too early, the first planting was poor. Getting the timing right is tough.

1 hour ago, padlin said:

Getting the timing right is tough.

Ya, that's the crap-shoot. Last year we had a late freeze here and I lost a lot of my planting. This year I'm holding off getting the beds planted until the 30% mark (30% chance of a freeze) instead of the 50% mark I've always gone by. It delays planting by about a week, but might save me another headache like last year.