Garden Time!

After the unexpected winter wonderland in February, Cletus got out over this past weekend to see what was going on in the garden, what survived, what did not survive, and what needed to be done.  He has been so busy with quail builds lately this is the first time he has been able to get out and get his hands in the dirt.

We did lose some of our early plantings.  

Some tomato plants, 

 most of the cucumbers, which have now been replaced by tomatoes,

 

and about half the squash,

right side survived, left side did not

some of the potatoes, 

the fruit on the banana tree

and the loquat (which makes me sad).  

  The satsuma gave up entirely.

 But a lot more survived than we might have expected.  Most of the potatoes seem to be holding up well even though the cold seems to have slowed them down a bit.  

The onions and garlic are also still going although they have also slowed down.  

 

Most of the tomatoes did survive and the ones from the greenhouse have been planted, 

 the carrots seem to be holding up well, 

and the Zephyr squash are thriving. 

 
Cletus was finally able to get to a point with the quail build to be able to spend a full morning in the garden tilling and replanting.  


It was admittedly a gamble putting things in the ground as early as we did; most growing is a gamble.  Some years it pays off (2022 was great).  Some years it bites us.  The nice thing this year is that Cletus has time to replant and get things going.  

It is interesting to note that we had planted a number of plants to start selling small plants at the market.  Then we found out we would need both a nursery grower's permit and a nursery retail seller's permit.  We decided we had enough "new" going on this year to not attempt to add that on.  Since we made this decision, we had almost enough extra plants to put into the ground to make up for what we lost.  This keeps us from having to start a batch from seed and wait to put them into the ground.  We'll take those wins however we can get them!

Hopefully we will have produce at the market by April, possibly sooner.

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