Busy busy...

Tuesday, April 15
Yeah, it has been many days since my last post. Been busy busy. Since I last wrote I've made seasoning mixes and a few shelf stable dinner kits. Dehydrated a heap of mushrooms. Made some wicked ass pork, mushroom, and rice enchiladas. Introduced my sister to my homemade pickles, and she discovered shes a huge fan. Picked up a ton of carrots that were on supersale- dried up 4-5 pounds of grated, and made a couple jars of Zanahorias en Escabeche. Aka Spicy Mexican pickled carrots. Just made those today, this is what they look like, yum!

Got the wee folk garden all raked out of it's fall leaves- those got dumped onto the end of the dog run. Planted in Dusseldorf Pride Thrift, Butterfly Blue Scabiosa, and Touran Scarlet Saxifraga. The were on super clearance on a back rack at one of the hardware places. Here's the before and after shots :)

Along that back wall will be going in some lovely little red lilies. And to the far left just off the camera shot will be going the Milkmaid nasturtiums.  The patio itself needs some cleanup and tending this year.



Of course with spring is the popping up of spring bulbs!!

The garlic bed is looking great! I don't think I lost a single bulb. If all goes this well till harvest, we should have many pounds of different kinds of garlic to try out sometime in July/August.

The bed of dwarf dafs and siberian iris were in full bloom early last week- they are usually the first full on blooms the yard sees, so I keep an eye out for that pop of yellow!

So, about a week ago, this is what the south edge of the solarium looked like:

You can just see the tips of the king dafs I transplanted in last year from the bee patio in the first pic, and the naturalized regular dafs are just little clumps in the second pic....

And this is what they looked like just a week later! The king dafs are showing strong, and the earliest of the regular ones have started to bloom. In other nice news, looks like grandmas poppy survived another year :)

Got more cleanup and rearranging done in the solarium:

I now have a nice solid countertop, a potting table, and a double stack of plant shelves! Woot!! Much cleanup has been done since these pics were taken. Notice the pots on the top row in the bottim pic? The ones with the yellow markers? Those are nasturtiums, they were planted on the 4th with most of the rest of the pots you see.

Here's the same nasturtiums, pic taken last Sunday. Amazing what a little seed can do in a week! The Alaska peas are popping up too, and the chamomile that I planted a month ago did so well, I filled in the rest of that tray with another 24 plugs, and those are all sprouted now too :)
The cats hanging out in the solarium thing has been going pretty well so far- I think the hot pepper spray I made works, they haven't been chewing on some plants they have previously wanted to chomp on. They really like hanging out in there too. And they are starting to accept the fact the doors are just sometimes closed with less meowing and fuss, lol. 

Got the herb garden raked out nicely, and some seeds planted in on Sunday.

In the left back is rainbow carrot, in front of it is golden beet. Next are the spikes showing where the tarragon and savory grow. Then next in the back is lettuce, in front of it mixed beets. On the right edge is a patch of spinach, and in front sparkler red tip radish. Just out of the pic in the bottom right corner is where I moved the french thyme too- it was right on the edge of the walkway, heh.
Yeah, I know it's kind of early to start seed, but these are the heartiest of the seeds, and I'm in a zone warmer than most of my readers- I'm in zone 6. And the south side of the house gets the extra dose of warm. And with the leaves stripped off, I really wanted to get something on that tender open soil asap. If I really screwed the pooch and went too early, I still have a gajillion seed tapes to make, lol.


While my sister was here we picked up the materials to fix the solarium roof- now we just need the right stretch of warm and dry days to get it in place and sealed up. Also picked up the stuff to grow potatoes this year. I'm trying garbage bag growing this year, going to try the straw and manure mix. I picked up Australian Fingerling, Adirondak Blue, Kennebec, and Red Pontiac.

We got tons of cleaning and re-arranging done while she was here too. Lots of little stuff that is just easier to do with two people on the job. Like installing some closet rods, woot! We also went for a couple nature walks, got to scatter some black eyed susan and wild sweet pea seeds in their areas. Also sprinkled in a whole new batch of parsley seed down in the tulip border- and hooray, looks like I might have a couple parsleys that survived from last year!

Found out the hard way that my new little greenhouse blows over unless it's filled- so at the moment all the milk jug greenhouses are on the shelves in there. No problem, I guess those wild flowers are getting double shots of protection for the moment. Though soon enough I will need to move all those nasts out there.