The Garden Gets Rolling

Saturday was the first day this year that really felt like spring. It warmed up to the mid-60's, the sun was shining and the air smelled wonderful!  

First thing in the morning, I zipped over to the local home improvement store for some supplies.  It's nice when you can drive the truck right into the garden.

It's time to get the asparagus in the ground. This 2' x 10' bed is where my asparagus will live. 

There are a few things to keep in mind before you plant asparagus. First, they are perennials and can live for a decade or more. Second, the ferns can grow amazingly tall. Sometimes as tall as six feet. You'll want to locate your asparagus patch in an area where it can happily live for years and years. Plus, you'll need to keep in mind that the tall ferns will cast shadows on other plants around them. 

I chose Jersey Knight Hybrid asparagus. 

It has mostly male plants, so they have a higher yield. Betcha didn't know asparagus had both male and female plants!  Female plants put more energy into flowers, while males put out more of the edible stalks.

This is what the bare roots look like right out of the package.

I've located my asparagus bed on the north end of the garden. It's on the outer edge of the garden and therefore out of the way. The bed runs east to west, so any shadow the ferns cast will not create problems for plants in any of the other beds. 

This bed started like all the others. First is some chicken wire to help keep moles and gophers at bay. Then came landscape fabric, packing paper, and cardboard. 

On top of that goes the peat moss, vermiculite and compost.  The compost I bought this time seemed to have a lot of peat moss in it.  Since Square Foot Gardening uses a soiless  mix (called Mel's Mix (MM), after Mel Bartholomew the inventor of Square Foot Gardening (SFG))  of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite and 1/3 compost, I cut back on the amount of pure peat moss and increased the amount of compost. Doing this helps keep the ratio true. 

In SFG, you can plant more in less space. Asparagus gets one square foot for each plant. I had 22 of them to put in. I allowed a couple of extras in case a few don't grow. 

The root crowns go in about 3 inches deep. In a few weeks, as they grow, I'll add another few inches of MM on top of the bed. 

These little hoops will protect the plants until I can get some fencing up to keep the deer out.  We have a very serious deer problem.

As I was out working in the garden, these girls  came by apparently to see when the salad bar would be ready.  

I've seen them jump the 6 foot high fence around the perennial garden, so I'm going to need something similar to the Great Wall of China to keep them out of the garden. 

Today was also Allium Day. Allium is the genus of the onion family. 

Red Onions

Shallots

The red onions and shallots will live together in this 3' x 3' garden bed.

The garlic is looking a little stressed from the winter. Some of the pine needle mulch was still frozen solid to the ground. But the tough little garlic shoots might be OK.

I completely opened the hoop house (HH), too. I wanted to straighten out the deer barrier and plastic. Everything is looking healthy in there. 

Look what was hanging out inside the HH...a lady bug!

Today's plantings in the HH included collards, Swiss chard, and green onions. 

I love the Square Foot Gardening method because when it's time to plant in the spring, there's no digging or roto-tilling. The planting mix in the raised beds is always ready to go.

I don't even need a spade or a rake. My garden tools consist of a hand trowel, a hori hori and an old plastic chopstick. 

What's a hori hori? It's a Japanese soil knife. 

A hori hori is a formidable tool. It's a heavy, sharp, serrated steel blade that's perfect for digging, weeding and cutting. Handle with care! I sliced the ball of my thumb wide open on the blade. (A little super glue fixed my thumb right up! No time to fuss with stitches!)

The mesclun from a few weeks ago has sprouted. It's been a bit slow going. No doubt because it's been very cold AND there's been a blizzard. 

A few radish sprouts are finally visible, too.

Here's the spinach sprouts

The plants that wintered over in the HH are perking up.

Sedum (an ornamental)

Garlic chives

Yarrow

Echinacea

Two varieties of mint

Until the deer fencing is up, I'll be protecting the beds individually. The 3' x 3' ones will get a  cover like this. 

They are 10' sections of Schedule 40 PVC.  I'm giving some thought to cutting each section in half, then using a cross connection to join the sections at the top. I think it will make it look nicer.  I'll fasten deer block fencing to the PVC. It's tall enough that I can grow things like peppers and eggplants under there. 

Just as I got finished with all of this, it began to rain. Yippee! We need moisture badly.  

Stay tuned for my next project...starting seeds indoors.

Spring Planting Begins

Last weekend, just ahead of our third blizzard of the season, I planted the first of the spring crops.  The weather the day before the storm was sunny with 50 degree temperatures. It was hard to convince myself that it was going to snow within 24 hours. 

I had run to the grocery store to pick up coffee cream and the pre-blizzard panic buying was in full swing. Kinda makes me wonder 1) do these people have completely bare cupboards at home that a bit of snow scares them into thinking they'll starve to death before they can get out again and 2) exactly how long do people think they're going to be stuck in their homes?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....until I build a hoop house (HH) over more garden beds, I'm still working in the one that's been trucking along all winter. 

I'm using the Square Foot Gardening method, so I can pack a lot into very small spaces. 

This round included:

French Breakfast Radishes? Do the French really eat radishes for breakfast?

According to the seed packages, I should have the makings for a nice salad in about 30 days!

True to the weather forecast, the next morning it started snowing.

It must have been a hard, snowy winter since I'm not snapping dozens of photos of every storm anymore. The captions and titles get monotonous...Here's the snow on February 4th. Here's the blizzard on February 17th. Here's the snow on February 21st. Here's the blizzard on March 7th. Sheesh! Boring!

Spring officially arrives this Wednesday and Crossed Sabers Ranch is very much ready for it!

The Garden - Entombed in Ice, But Still Growing!!

After a couple of months of hard winter, this weekend we had a welcome break in the weather. Temperatures yesterday and today have been in the mid-50's.  The snow is melting fast, which is wonderful. The downside is that everything is a muddy mess. 

Saturday, I went out to see how the hoop house is faring. I haven't looked in it since I picked a salad out of it on December 30th. 

Even with the warm temps, the house was still surrounded by deep snow.

I did what I could to shovel it out but under the snow was solid ice.

The boards I use to hold the plastic down were frozen to the ground. One of them even split in half when I tried to force it loose. That's the split piece leaning against the house.

Although I was anxious to see what was going on inside AND get my spring lettuce, spinach, radishes and onions planted, I was going to have to wait for the sun to melt all that ice.

This morning, I was able to pry most of the boards out of the ice. One stubborn board wouldn't give, but I was still able to lift the plastic a bit on one side. It was the deer netting that kept me from doing anything more than looking inside the house. The deer netting is still frozen to the ground. I couldn't lift it out of the way. Bummer!

But check this out!  The spinach is alive and limping along. Amazing! (The black squares in the photo is the deer netting.)

Even more amazing is that the crop I planted in October has grown.

Here's what it looked like on December 30th. The tiny baby spinach plants are just visible under the frost blanket. I used red arrows to help you find them.

Here they are now. (This photo was taken from the opposite side of the house, so the new crop is on the left in this one.)

The lettuce isn't doing as well as the spinach. Some of it looks like it might have survived. I'll see what it does over the next few weeks.

The garlic chives are sprouting.

The yarrow is looking wonderful!

The mint and sage seem to be sprouting, too. I couldn't get close enough to take photos.

I closed the house back up to keep the warmth in. Hopefully, the warm sun today will melt the ice that's trapped the edges of the deer netting. I really want to plant my spring crops!

This hoop house experiment was surprisingly successful.  It's entirely possible to grow fresh greens all winter long in the Colorado Rockies!  I can't believe it really worked!