N & C Midwest: March and April 2024

Home Depot has a sale of strawberry plants (actually, all berry plants), and even though I don't need any more strawberry plants I couldn't pass up the deal.  $2.49 for 10 Ozark Beauty strawberry plants was just too good a deal.

The power company is busy trimming the trees in their lines, and they gifted me with a load of wood chips today so that I can refresh the walkways around the raised beds.  

The Sweet Potato Slips are coming along nicely, and will soon be ready to take off the potato and put into a jar of water to start rooting. The goal is to get them ready for planting in mid-May.

The sugar snap peas are up, and about 2" high. Can't wait to start picking some fresh peas!  The bunching onions are ready transplant into the garden, which I hope to get done in the next couple days.

Transplanted the kale and broccoli into the raised bed this evening. We have a mild week of weather forecasted, so they should be ready to start growing.

Transplanted the bunching onions into one of the raised beds today. Had 300 Ishikura Bunching Onion seedlings multi-sowed in a 72-cell tray. Planted each cell from the tray at 16 per square, as I have done in previous years.

Had a sleet storm this afternoon, and the kale, broccoli, and swiss chard plants took a beating.  Many of the leaves of the young kale and broccoli were broken off, but the young leaves at the crown are okay and will still grow. The swiss chard was beaten flat against the grown, but they should recover as well. Didn't bother the bunching onions that were transplanted two days ago, though.

Scorpio Rising wrote:My first strawberry rhubarb pie of the year!  Yummy with some vanilla ice cream!

Yummy, yummy, yummy....  

I just pulled some Rhubarb last evening for our next pie. The plants are really growing now. Even the two new crowns I split off the Canada Red plant have grown as big as their mother plant, but I usually don't pull any stalks from plants for their first year of growth.

Showing off how fast my my Rhubarb plants are growing this year, a day after stalks were pulled from the three Glaskins Perpetual Rhubarb plants. No stalks were pulled from the three Canada Red Rhubarb plants, though.

These three plants are Canada Red ones, that I split last fall. The one on the right is the original plant, which I cut in half and made the two new crowns which were planted in the fire rings to the left of the original plant. We have already harvested stalks from the original plant on the right, but will not pull any from the two new first year plants. These are a sweet, red rhubarb that make excellent pies.

These three plants are Glaskins Perpetual Rhubarb, which have the advantage of being able to harvest them all summer, right up to the first frost. The closest plant is 3 years old, and the other two are 2 years old. These are also red rhubarb plants, and almost as sweet as the Canada Red. I grew these from seed that I purchased from Baker Creek Heirloom.

Had a freeze last night, got down to 27ºF. The kale, broccoli, bunching onions, and radishes all appear unscathed, but the Swiss Chard that survived the Apr 12th sleet storm did not survive the freeze. I'll have to start some new seeds to replace those.

Picked the first radishes this morning. Couldn't wait for them to get bigger. Ha!  Somewhat surprised that the plants have survived three hard freezes, and still growing.

Scorpio Rising wrote:I love radishes!  A couple radishes, salt and butter on bread sounds heavenly!

The DW was happy that some of the radishes just made it into the house!