Here in the Northeast winters usually feel endless to me. This year I started early. The Cape is a little warmer owing to being on the seashore, and I have some early start herbs I’m putting in. WOOOO!
Cape cod soil is pretty much what you’d expect … sand and clay. And lots of it. So we trucked in some planting soil and started clearing away vines and debris in a sunny spot to the west of the house.
It doesn’t look like much right now but it will be full of flowering herbs this summer! And we’ve found a local fence company to put in a garden fence for us – it’ll have to be dug into the ground to protect my precious gardens from rabbits and woodchucks. Two stories come to mind whenever I think about rabbits and woodchucks decimating my garden: Peter Rabbit and Caddyshack. You wouldn’t expect those two to go together, would you??
early herbs include chamomile, echinacea angustifolia, comfrey
And importantly, our friends the garlic shoots have made an appearance:
garlic emerging from a bed of leaves
Is this garlic shoot seriously not the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen?
chard and onions starting to grow in a seed starter mat.
Finally, the onions and kale I started early are coming along. I added a few leek seeds in later, to the right, and I’m waiting for those to germinate. Later this month it’ll be lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower.
I am dreaming of spring flowers and greens, and beach walks. Soon!
A friend from our local farming non-profit, Farming Falmouth, turned me onto this application. It’s called SeedTime – it’s an app for planning gardens. He wanted me to evaluate it for the non-profit with an eye toward using it to plan gardens around town and … I bought it for myself. Some people can’t resist buying clothes, jewelry, and watches. This is the third online program and second piece of software I’ve purchased to play in my yard with. I know plenty of tech-savvy nature lovers, but gardeners? Not sure. Feel free to set me straight, but I think I’m pretty weird.
Anyway, the screenshot above is a pic of my developing and definitely NOT finished backyard plan. I’m grouping things that grow happily together and then matching that according to what gets planted during a given week. So, for instance, this picture above shows what’s growing in April. Later on, there will be other crops added and the crops and arrangement will change.
garlic growing in last year’s garden – scrapes are the curling pointed stalks you see here and they are delicious!
I managed to jam some garlic in before it got too cold – but I forgot to add it to my plan, so I’ll rework it to include the garlic, my rhubarb plant, and some herbs I put in the day we arrived. (Yes, I’m that attached to my plants.)
The planting – onions, early start indoors – starts in a couple of weeks! Wow! Last year I direct-seeded onions and wound up with teeny-tiny little ones. I guess now I know why! They weren’t in for long enough!
I have always ignored the days to maturity on my seed packets for three reasons. 1- I’m lazy (or too busy drinking wine while I plan the garden). 2- I am not growing for profit so I don’t *need* to know how long till maturity. I can just, you know, plant them and see what happens… and 3 – I’m not disciplined or organized enough to plan my calendar around my planting activities. I know my limits and the truth is I like to play in the dirt. I made mud cakes when I was a kid, too.
But seedtime makes it both effortless and fun to just plant things when you’re supposed to, and to actually *know* when to harvest them — It’s on a color-coded calendar! No more staring at the aerial parts and wondering if my roots are ready. It’s an epiphany.
Honestly, in all of my years working in the software industry I have appreciated A LOT about the cool things we built, but this takes the cake. And no, those guys have no idea I am writing about them in this blog.
glorious, beautiful radishes just after harvesting garden last year.
I wish they included annual herbs (herbs that won’t grow happily in the northeast) in their crops schedule. I’ll suggest it!
Backyard Botanics 