Friday, May 20, 2011

Junque Yard

It's a slow news day on the neo-faux-ghetto homestead...

Spring has been a cold and wet loser-fest. I hate to sound like a Negative Nelly, but I heard one newscaster say something to the effect of there only have been 4 clear days since the end of February. And it's probably been longer, because I remember January and February both being cloudy all the freakin' time.

The point is, there hasn't been any dang sun.

This makes for slow growing here on the urban micro-mini-ranch. I've got herbs going crazy, but that's about it. The sugar snap peas that I planted at the end of March are only 2 inches high. My spinach and lettuce aren't even worth mentioning - and that's usually my first bumper crop of the season!

The strawberries are struggling, as the ground has been too wet to weed and replant the runners that popped up at the end of fall last year. Yeah, they don't tell you that, do they? You may only get about a month's worth of strawberries (these being the June-bearing variety), but they make baby plants all summer long. I swear strawberries are like the bunny-rabbits of plants.

I have one herb that I have no idea what it is. It's driving me crazy. It smells a little bit like oregano, but it looks nothing like the oregano I've got, and I only planted one kind. It's the mystery herb, and it's about to get the axe, unless I can identify it.

I have onions coming up that I planted last spring. They disappeared mid-summer and I figured I must have planted them in a place that was too wet for them to tolerate, they got soggy and croaked. Nope..these are apparently ghost onions, and have decided to come back and haunt my herb garden again this spring. Will they disappear again mid-summer?  I'll keep you informed....

And lastly, I spent 2 hours tying up the raspberry canes tonight. I'd been kind of ignoring them, because they were supposed to be dug up and put into a new bed that we've been trying to build since there was still snow on the ground. However the weather hasn't allowed us to get back there and finish. Well, that and the fact that we ran out of wood, and haven't found any other useable scavenged wood lately. So, those darn raspberries, being contrary by nature, decided to grow like nothing else in my edible beds, which means like Popeye's forearms after a can of spinach. I decided that the raspberries will be moved after they have been harvested (I didn't want them not to produce if I moved them too late in the season - I know raspberries are hardy, but still...if you've ever had fresh off the vine, you know why I'm being cautious), so we've got a couple of months yet to finish the berry boxes at the back of the yard.

I'm going to the Farmer's Market for the first time this year on Saturday. I've been waiting to see if it's open yet, and finally got word that it is, so look out farmers. I'm-ma comin'!  I can't wait to get my hands on some plants and some early veggies, and some more plants...and maybe some eggs, and them more plants! woo hoo!

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