As you can see, we have some healthy green sprouts that popped up over the past couple weeks despite lots of cold, dreary weather. These are zinnias, and they are thriving. Our pepper sprouts aren't so impressive. It's just been too cold and not enough sun. We should really have a grow light or a heating pad, but I didn't want to bother with that stuff this year. Even Cat Friend was still in winter mode. She was smart and stayed in bed most days this week.
Likewise, we haven't done much in the garden for the past couple weeks because we've been too busy with traveling, work, and school. However, this weekend we took advantage of the slightly warmer weather and got a lot accomplished. Saturday was still pretty cold, cloudy, and damp so we bundled up and got to work. Our goal for the weekend was to plant all our herbs, lettuce, spinach, and peas. We found a neat design for an herb spiral in a permaculture book that Matt undoubtedly found at a thrift store for 25 cents. It's a really neat idea, and we found a pile of mossy old bricks by the barn which we used to build up the sides.
Then we planted a few rows of spinach and lettuce on either side of the spiral. I'm really looking forward to eating fresh greens and herbs in about a month!
Finally, we planted peas along the shady side of our porch and out in the main garden. Even Cat Friend was on hand to help out!
We plan to tie strings up to the porch for the peas to grow on, and we made a tepee trellis out of willow branches that Matt cut down out in the main garden. This will be our first attempt at peas, so I hope it goes well. We're a little late getting them in the ground, but hopefully it won't get too hot for a while. We used an inoculant from Johnny's for the peas, so we'll see what happens. Again, I can't wait to chomp on some fresh sweet peas from the garden! I'm imagining a big bowl of spaghetti carbonara with peas. And we got a variety that produces a lot of tendrils which you can also pick and eat. Perhaps I'm just hungry, but the thought of all this green food is making me drool!
It's so refreshing to be outside watching the grass turn green and the beginnings of spring flowers. This is the payoff for enduring the endless days of winter!
