Oh beautiful day!

As the day began

We had one of the most delightful days in a very long time today.  The forecasters were dead on this time.  I planned on getting a very early start to the day given the forecast and what I really needed to get accomplished.
I actually look forward to beating the sun up because it is a very special time of the day to me.  The world is quiet for a while and you can just take in all of God's beauty.  It affords me time to breathe and just exist.  Even the birds aren't quite up yet.  And in the area where we live, that is saying alot as we have a very big population of loud birds.  Sometimes I can imagine me as a farmer and being out in the fields and just taking in the day before getting on to the business of farming.  You know, looking down from a hill over the rolling fields below just as morning is approaching.  It has to be one of the best offices with a view in the world.
So,  I was up at 5:15 and raring to go.  I put on my headlamp as it was dark outside and began the day.  I had a pile of limbs that needed to be cut up and bagged along with other yardwaste.  I sometimes have to wonder what my neighbors think when they see me up that early.  Then again, they may not even be up.  So here was my view at 5:30AM

I said it was dark didn't I?  I began clearing the pile and cutting up the pile when it occurred to me that most of the limbs were rather substantial.  Then it hit me - why not?

Permaculture anyone?

I decided to practice a little permaculture gardening.  Never heard of it?  Well, it is quite complex but one of the parts of it is to use what your land produces.  In this case, I decided to attempt to employ the various branches of the tree in my yard as plant supports in my garden.  I tried it last year with my Peppers and it worked very well for me.  So, I trimmed the various large branches down and bagged the waste products and the little limbs for disposal this week.  When I started, I thought I might get maybe 10 or so limbs for Pepper supports.  Here are the culled limbs.

After about an hour or so, I had all my limbs trimmed and ready for use in the garden.  And the bounty from nature was far more than I anticipated.  Here are the Pepper supports.  All 15 of them!

And here are the Tomato supports.

There are 11 of them.

Frugality?

Now, my experience is that these will last for about 2 or 3 years.  But then again, who cares?  I looked at tomato cages and supports and they can cost anywhere from $4 to $9 each.  Even at $3 a piece, that is a savings of $78.00 all totaled not counting taxes.  That seems significant to me.  I have been and continue to be frugal if nothing else when it comes to my garden.  Maybe I am a throwback given my experiences but it all adds up.  And readily free materials are available if you look for them and use your imagination.  I will go into this further in a subsequent post.

Sprucing up!

I've decided this year to tighten up the look of my gardens.  I noticed that the fence posts that I use were pretty well worn from the many years of service so I bought some spray paint to bring them back to life.  I think the results speak for themselves.  Before:

and after:

A small but I think significant improvement.  I'm going to paint the rest of them next chance I get.  \

Winter garden progress  

During the day, I checked in on the progress of the winter garden I kept going all through the winter. I wasn't expecting the lettuce to be doing okay as the temps were high and this garden was covered with three layers of protection.  So, I uncovered them in the 80 degree heat we had today and this is what I found.

Quite an early salad garden!  Not at all what I expected but I will take it.  I removed the extra layer of the thick greenhouse plastic to insure that it wouldn't get too hot in the greenhouse this week.  Of course, I will have to keep an eye on the weather to make sure it doesn't get too cold.  At this point, it looks like it will be normal without any drastic low temps.

Shared garden?

I have a freind who with his wife wants a garden this year.  They are really busy so I volunteered to help them this year with the garden.  When he told me he'd have 400 square feet of garden I kind of thought he was over shooting it.  He contacted me to come over to look at the space today.   Here are the spaces.

This is one plot.  Here's the other.

And here's the rest of the above space.

He wasn't kidding.  This is probably a little bigger than 400 sq ft.  It's what I call - big fun.  The nice thing about this is that it runs east to west and there are no trees to shade the sun.  The bulk of the space will be in full sun.  Should work for most plants but it defintely won't work too well for lettuce and such.  

Next?

Lots for sure.  Just seems that you run out of time regardless of how early you get up.  I have yet to ramp up with the community garden I have been helping out with and I am behind in growing my plants.  Having a full time job and doing serious gardening is sometimes overwhelming.  I mean, I put in 10 hours in on my garden and yard today and it feels like I did not get enough done.  Where did all this work come from?  But, you know what, I got to spend 10 hours on things I needed to and in my garden.  Not a bad day actually. 

And you?

Hopefully you are ramping up your garden activities just about now.  There is certainly alot to do this time of the year regardless of where and what zone you live in.  I hope you are getting your hands dirty and the soil tilled.  And, until next time, happy gardening everyone!