The past few days have been
really nice here in The Valley. Lawn
mowers are buzzing everywhere around our house.
We haven’t cut our grass yet because we like to let it get a little
shaggy before the first cut of the year.
(Yes, we are the nightmare neighbors that nobody wants to live next to…thank
goodness we don’t have a home owners association or we’d be run out of the
neighborhood for sure.) As a result of
letting our grass grow, we’ll have plenty of grass clippings to put between the
plants in our vegetable beds. If the
garden bed is weed-free when you spread the grass clippings between the plants,
it will save you a lot of weed pulling later on as the layer of grass will
choke out the weed growth. The clippings
will also decompose naturally, which provides nutrients to your garden. I consider this a win-win situation as you have
a real reason to put off mowing your yarn and, when you finally do mow it, the
clippings go in the garden instead of in your local landfill.
Our fruit trees are starting
to bloom and our berry bushes and grapes are starting to set leaves as
well. As noted in a previous post (February 24, 2014 Fresh Off The Vine), I pruned our grape vine in late
winter. Then later I lightly pruned our
little pear and peach trees, which aren’t very old. We had to prune our plum tree really hard as
it had gotten out of control and no longer wanted to be the “dwarf” tree that
it was meant to be. So the poor thing is
looking a little ragged right now although it surprisingly has a few blooms on
it. Our “thornless” blackberry bushes
are growing like gang busters! My
sister, Betty, gave me some canes from her blackberry bushes a couple of years
ago and they have multiplied quite nicely.
We should have a fairly decent crop this year. In addition, my rhubarb is up and the stalks
are almost long enough to cut. I can
hardly wait for some fresh home-made Strawberry Rhubarb Slab Pie. YUM!!!
(I’ll post that on the “Gluten-Free Recipes” tab within the next week or
two when I make that.)
Charming and I continue to
work on the pavers in the garden. It’s
coming along nicely and we should have it done by the time we get everything
planted in our garden. I will post a
picture of the finished product some time next month. So far we’ve planted sweet potatoes, red
potatoes, white potatoes, and blue potatoes.
(How’s that for being patriotic?!?!)
We’ve also got onions, snow peas, and lettuce coming up already. We’re just waiting for warmer weather to set
out our peppers and tomato plants, which are currently growing nicely in
Charming’s office.
Spring is definitely the
finest time of the year!
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| Despite our going crazy with the pruning shears, our poor plum tree is still trying to give us fruit. What a girl! |
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| Last year, our pear tree had six pears...looks like we may get a few more this year if all goes well. |
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| Heaven is a place where you get to eat all the blackberries, sugar and cream that you want...without getting a belly ache. (Ooooohhhh...there's Max the Wonder Dog in the background!) |
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| Tart rhubard is a great addition to strawberry pies, but the leaves are toxic so dispose of them properly. |
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