Fixettwell Farmlet: Signs of spring

For as long as I (Bea) can remember, Autumn has always been my favorite season. I love the color and crunch of the leaves, the juxtaposition of the first cooling winds with the still-warm sun hitting your skin, the feeling of abundance but impermanence of everything around you.

Redbud

This year though, after a really bitter cold winter, spring seems to be vying for that favorite season prize in my heart. Part of it is being in a new place, coupled with my terrible tree-bark ID skills. Everywhere I turn, I see what I have perceived as a gray looming stack of twigs in the background of our yard, now surprising me with beautiful spring blooms. Some trees & shrubs I had half-way considered chopping down turn out to be fruit-bearing!

Spring bulbs are popping up everywhere & changing the routes of walking paths we've gotten in the habit of taking all winter while the bare ground presented us with no obstacles. Areas we thought were only full of weeds turn out to have been carefully landscaped at some point in the past, just overgrown. The winter snows have killed back most of the weeds and we are seeing the gardens take a fresh start.

Last November, we dug up and divided a bunch of herbs we'd planted at our old house and community garden plot back in DC. In 5-gallon buckets, we drove it all down here and popped it into a front garden bed that looked totally overgrown (besides an enormous butterfly bush). We hoped that moving the herbs as they were going dormant would allow them the winter to recover and hopefully survive.

The first signs of life we saw this spring were some of our transplanted sorrel leaves in early March. Daffodils started peeking their stems up around the same time, and then some chives. At first I was out there encouraging the plants to grow, then I saw on the weather forecast that a mega snowstorm was predicted just after St Patrick's Day, so I switched my tune to telling the plants to stop growing & wait. Not that the plants paid any attention, but somehow they were able to survive all the wintry weather, even a late mid-April freeze! When the snows and frost receded and we saw leaves that were still green, we were very happy!

At the end of March, the raspberries that we planted just before Christmas also finally started budding. From walking among the three rows of trellises, it looks like we had a pretty great survival rate despite giving those plants a rough start (storing them in a trash bag for 3 months!) What a relief after all the effort building those trellises took!

Over on the other side of the house, the asparagus bed is slowly coming alive and yielding its delicious spring treats. So far, unfortunately, none of the purple asparagus that we dug up and transplanted has sprouted, but the green variety that the previous farmhouse owners grew is pretty darn tasty.

In the hoophouse, the seeds we started in trays began germinating by the end of March. At least every other day, I go out there and inspect the trays for new sprouts. Depending on the size of the seed, the signs of life can be extremely tiny, but always very exciting!

Turnips and carrots are growing nicely in the hoophouse

Our seeds planted in the ground in the hoophouse were also starting to come up by the end of March, and many are now of harvestable size.

Radishes are always one of the earliest spring crops, only taking 3-4 weeks from when you pop the seed in the ground until you're eating them up.

The alien potatoes Chris planted back in March have grown leaves and appear to be doing well!

Indoors, our tomatoes had grown big enough they needed repotting into individual containers. I had been avoiding this for some time because it's almost time to plant them outdoors, and repotting takes a bunch of potting soil and time to make sure everything stays labeled properly throughout the process. But the main reason I was avoiding this task was due to lack of space. The shelf I've used for seed-starting indoors is also the winter respite for various houseplants, so it only has enough space for 4 trays of vegetable/herb seedlings. Unfortunately, with our plant-chewing cats, we have to keep the plants behind a window-screen setup to ensure survival! However, while we were up in Maryland working on the house for sale, we picked up an amazing second-hand super professional plant growing rack from Community Forklift. This new setup holds 8 trays, and so finally gives us the space needed to expand our indoor growing area and keep the pepper trays directly on a heat mat -- which has finally yielded just a bit of increased germination. We're probably still going to have to buy some pepper plants, but most other plants we've seeded this spring have germinated great despite being older, expired seeds.

As more and more plants bud out in the yard, we realize we planted our herb garden in the middle of what was once a butterfly garden -- hopefully the butterflies like the smell of our herbs! A tree over by the main garden turns out to be a plum tree -- super exciting! We think another tree in the back yard is some kind of pear tree, and the tree under our streetlights looks to be a cherry of some kind. We're hoping of course that these are productive and delicious, but for now we are just enjoying the ornamental quality of the beautiful spring blooms throughout our yard!