May in Western Mountains and Plains

This month starts with such a rush.  I can still get frosts but it is warm enough for all sorts of stuff to be planted.  I see that the self seeding orach has adult leaves now, there is lots of cilantro popping up and I just saw broccoli raab popping up where I let it go to seed last year.  I even saw a sunflower in a warm protected spot.  I use these self seeded plants as soil temperature indicators.  It is definitely time for any cool weather plants and seeds to get planted.

Right now I have 3 beds fully planted.  A small one with lettuce, chard, green onions and volunteering raab.  A big one, 4x8, with sugar snap and snow peas down the long sides.  The center is all cilantro volunteers (I cleaned the seed heads off there last fall, is that then really volunteers?).  The ends have various oriental cabbages and raab that I started indoors and transplanted out. Then the tomato bed in the greenhouse, 2.5 x 12, with 12 indeterminate tomatoes.

I planted potatoes, this year they are in the remnants of a cold frame.  I figure they will be easy to cover if needed and I can keep mulching them until they top the walls.  I planted fingerlings, those are usually reliably indeterminate for potato tower purposes.

How are your gardens doing?

I should of taken a picture yesterday morning.  I came home and found that some one dear to me had gone to close up the greenhouse being all sweet,,,,, and left the gate open.  The sheep mowed the peas, lettuce, tulips, raab blooming strawberrys and asparagus.  They snipped off and spat out the garlic.  

I just did some reseeding.  Some stuff still has a bottom leaf left so I am hoping will come back.

I need to make a gate that swings shut righteously.  Maybe the dear one will take interest in this project.  He loves asparagus and alpine strawberries very much.

So sorry this happened to you. Your dear one must feel awful.

Thanks, you guys. I still would like to wail like that baby when I look at the struggling peas. O well.

I was planning to flip a compost pile into the squash bed today and then plant corn where it had been. It is cool and rainy outside. Yesterday somehow 5 small bushes followed me home (along with the Stevia and a rosemary). It is a good tree planting day.
We have neighbors now to our east. Sigh. I decided to plant a bit of a barrier between us and them. I have tried planting bushes in this area before (in anticipation that people might build) but everything was killed by dry wind and/or marauding livestock. The baby apple trees were eaten by a neighbor's bull (he just looked at me and shook his head when I came out side to shush him along, When his owner showed up he did not even need to be told to go, he just galumphed along home.) The lilacs, Nanking cherries and hazelnuts all whimpered along not thriving until succumbing in a winter. My land was once river bottom. It has sand bars, and silt pits, and cobblestone areas, and clay banks, all hidden under a virtually flat field. The area for these trees has dense silt and clay. I am planting a chokecherry, saskatoon, pea shrub, lilac (hope springs eternal) willow and our native juniper. Wish them luck.

In the SFG I got the broccoli planted. In the greenhouse the tomatoes are out of the wall o waters and tied now. Beans have been planted along with allysum, cumin, marigolds, stevia and rosemary. Today I plan to transplant the cucumbers and melons and put w-o-w around them.

We have been having a lot of rain lately and at last the night temperatures are above 50! YAHOO! I am trying to decide to plant beans outside. We are a week yet to last frost date.
Lots of cilantro, orach, green onions, lettuce for picking.
The nibbled on peas have at last taken off and are starting to grab the trellis and get going. Carrots are making their second leaves at last.
The beans in the greenhouse are sprouting. There are tomatoes blooming. It is time to move the peppers out into the greenhouse and plant the others into the cold frame.
I spent the day putting together a soaker hose watering system.