Port Potager

Continuing around the garden to the swingset quadrant, we have our planting plan for the 2018 season: On the left, as always, is the asparagus . It’s not nearly as productive as it once was, so this spring we will try renovating it by resetting the crowns lower in the earth and adding some lime to counteract the soil acidity from a nearby evergreen tree.  Across the top are perennial grapes and herbs — nothing to see there.  Along the right side is space for Jenny Lind melons, which is a new variety of small, green fleshed melons. This is an heirloom variety popular among the Pennsylvania Dutch, and we got the seeds on a trip to the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum last spring. There’s also a potato patch. Along the bottom is a very small length of trellised cucumbers, which will be for slicing. We have tons of pickles from last summer, so we won’t be planting any pickling cukes at all. There’s also an assortment of dill, arugula, beets and cauliflo...

We made our garden plan back in February, but I forgot to document it. I was reminded of this when we pulled out the plan to actually start planting. It hasn’t been warm — it’s snowing as I write this — but the ground has thawed and we can get started with our hardiest cool-weather plants. The leeks we ordered came in the mail, so we had to get them in the ground. We bought transplants instead of doing them from seed this year, and they are about as big around as a pencil — much bigger than the tiny strings we’ve managed to get starting them on our own. These are much easier to work with, and I’m certain they’ll have a better survival rate than our tiny seedlings, so this looks to be a good investment. Behind the cold frame you can see a few of last year’s leeks — these are the stragglers we haven’t harvested yet. Usually when we plant in March, we’re out of luck when it comes to compost. That’s because the City Yard doesn’t open until April and our pile is usually frozen....

In theory, we should be planting peas and onions next weekend, but this is the state of things in the garden today: A series of four nor’easters and below-average temps have set us behind schedule for planting. I imagine the snow will be gone by next weekend, but I’m not sure if the soil will be ready to work or if it will be too frozen or too wet or too something else.  I’m not feeling in much of a rush this year since it’s been so miserable outside this month. The local weather reporters have taken to saying that March is the new February, and they’re right. Since we appear to have some additional time on our hands, I transplanted our broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower seedlings into peat pots: It should be noted that these seedlings look great  this year. I attribute this to more diligent use of our lamp to make sure they were getting enough light on all those cloudy, stormy days: The brassica is scheduled to be transplanted into the garden in t...

We’ve been socked with three nor'easters in two weeks, all of which resulted in snow that canceled school. We also lost power for a couple days, which is not at all fun  in the middle of winter.  So I was very happy to ditch the crummy weather and head south to North Carolina for the weekend. They’re a good six to eight weeks ahead of us when it comes to the ground warming, so my trip to Reynolda Gardens in Winston-Salem was a hint of what is eventually to come this spring. Enjoy! It was nice to be reminded of green grass, pansies and daffodils, but I did have to return to an additional 18 inches of snow at the end of my trip. Sigh.  Did I mention there’s a possibility of another  nor’easter next week? March is the new February, it seems.

We had an incredibly warm day last week — 75 degrees in February! — which was perfect for checking in on the bees. You can’t open the hive when it’s colder than about 55 degree for risk of chilling them, but they were all out and about enjoying the weather anyway, so we dove in. As suspected, the hive of bees that swarmed is still going strong, but the ones left behind in the original hive didn’t make it. I moved the mouse guard away from the door of the good hive to allow the bees access to all three entrances, and this gave them more room to start bringing out the dead. One of the more disconcerting things about a wine hive is that the bees can’t break free of their tight cluster when it’s cold, or they’ll freeze to death. That means that chores like carrying dead bees out of the hive have to wait until spring. There are a lot  of dead bees in there. Still, as soon as I moved the door, they started carrying out little bee corpses. I also put out some extra sugar water fo...

This has been a strange winter as far as temperatures go, and we’ve been bouncing between thaws and deep freezes throughout the season. On days when the temperature gets up to about 55 degrees, the honeybees will relax their tight cluster sine they don’t need to stay warm together, and they’ll leave the hive to fly around a bit. These are known as cleansing flights, and it lets them stretch their wings and get a little fresh air for a bit while they can. Three weeks ago we had a day in the 50s — and with sun, to boot. The bees from our swarmed hive were out and about, enjoying the fine weather!  There were no signs of life at the other hive , and it didn’t feel quite warm enough to open them up to have a look. The next time we have a day when the temperature is above 55 degrees, I’ll take a peek inside to check the honey situation. I’m not convinced that there’s enough food in either hive for a whole winter, but if the weaker colony has already died, I can look for a...

Last week I took a much-needed vacation to Palm Springs , California. Since that’s in the warm desert where it never freezes, there were plenty of flowers to enjoy. It was great see so much color when all we have here at home is gray and brown.  Mimosa Bougainvillea Trumpet creeper Cosmos Orchid Jasmine (maybe?)