April 1, 2010 ~ New England

Tell us what's going on in your New England garden world!
As for me, well, here we are, April 1, 2010. I was hoping that I could have planted my cold weather spring crops before now, you know, peas, beets, onions, shallots, spinach... but no, the schools are all canceled in my area for a SNOW DAY! The forecast calls for 4"-8" of snow today.

If I was a truly tenacious Yankee I would just go out and stick those peas in the ground! But no, I am feeling patient & I still have enough to keep me busy in the house.
I recently transplanted 2 varieties of tomatoes, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and basil. I sowed coleus yesterday and plan on sowing a few more annual flower seeds today.


I am continuing to do work on the new hive in anticipation of the arrival of my package of bees in a few weeks. Yeah! Bring on the pollinators!

What beautiful pictures, I know you are sick of it, but it's still quite pretty.

YEAH for bees!!! We have 3 hives and I have tons of things planed to stick in the SFG for bees, now if I can keep the goat out.

Turning it back over to you hardy N'Easterners.

FarmerValerie wrote:What beautiful pictures, I know you are sick of it, but it's still quite pretty.

YEAH for bees!!! We have 3 hives and I have tons of things planed to stick in the SFG for bees, now if I can keep the goat out.

Turning it back over to you hardy N'Easterners.

Thanks Val!!

Thanks for the pretty pic! We somehow sescaped the snow piling up, but it's still snowing.

I'm just getting started and love that your sfg are in front of your home. Our home backs up to a hill with trees and the back yard is quite shady. I will definitely have to consider doing a box or 2 out front. Keeping pests (kids, cats, neighbors...) out will be the biggest challenge.

I went out yesterday to cover the raised beds I'd shoveled free of snow, with plastic so that when the snow stops, I can just pull that snow off. Except that snow is sooooo heavy. So far 8" and still coming.

I know its durn pretty, and my creative eye loves it. My gardening self can't take much more of it.

My flower beds. I saw Iris greens popping up yesterday but today the heavy snow is bending the roses and other perennials over with their weight.

Inside, tho, my seedlings are doing well but need to go outside pretty soon. They are getting too big to stay inside much longer. These Broccoli are ready for the outdoors.


Lets hope the daily temps rise quickly to melt all this white stuff.

Good luck to all my gardening friends in the great white north!

When I lived in MA I used to think "If I can just get through February it will be OK".

An Oct snow is a bit of a treat but an April snow is just mean spirited.

I am glad for the rain for my seedlings but I wanted to be outside today doing things on my garden list. Tomorrow rain or not I am heading to my community plot and moving a holly bush. Here's were things are so far here in Boston.

Put together cold frame and moved some of my seedlings out (coleus was not a fan... too early I guess for the flowers)
Beds topped off with MM and extra compost added to each square
Started to put my wagon covers together for the garden blankets
Sowed carrots, beets, greens, endive, cress, mache, spinach, peas
Transplanted broc, cauliflower, cabbage

I finally went and bought all the electrical conduit to put up the trellises for each box. Putting them together was my plan for today and now tomorrow.

I took a walk thru my garden beds today. The snow is almost gone in the raised beds.

Last fall I mentioned I sowed winter rye as a greeen manure crop in some of my beds. Well, the green grass of winter rye came thru the winter just fine. A little too fine, even being buried under 2 feet of snow most of the winter. I foresee a hard job of cutting down below soil level this spring. I won't be doing that again. If I do a green manure crop at all it will be one that dies during the winter months.

I covered 3 of the beds with plastic before last weeks additonal 8 inches of snow and with the warm weather, they seem to be doing OK.

The proposed asparagus bed is covered with plastic. I'll be amending the soil very soon to get it ready for the asparagus crowns I've ordered.

All in all, I'm adjusting to my later start this year. I have to get my A-frame back up this week and my son is going to build the cold frame so things are in train.

Lets hope the warming trend continues in our neck of the woods.
Good gardening luck to my New England neighbors.

Yes, it's late, but last night I made the soil blocks and planted my 44 indoor seedlings and put them on a heat mat. Today I'm leveling my four boxes outside with stakes (this ground is so slopey and rocky that I could barely even find a good place to put them!) but I don't think I'll fill them yet, have to get a few more bags of compost.

Today it's off to Lowes to get the cedar for the afterthought 2 x 8 box for tomatoes (in back), squash & watermelons in front. Come to think of it, I'll need more fill for that box too.

Slow start, but getting there! Between the late depressing snow & cold weather and then 2 of my chickens got sick and died and I was researching for days about that issue. If my eggplants don't have a long enough growing season this year, I'll just try them again (earlier) next year.

I'd love to know how you all learned about your beekeeping. I'm taking a class in June, knowing nothing about it.

Take the class first, ask questions, check out books. My husband and I have wanted bees for years, I tell people all the time we have pretty much the same to do list, they are just arranged in different order. He took 1 class, bought a hive, and dug right in. With the goats, he brought them home, then I got some books, then we started building the pen, oi vey-men.

NHGardener wrote:Yes, it's late, but last night I made the soil blocks and planted my 44 indoor seedlings and put them on a heat mat. Today I'm leveling my four boxes outside with stakes (this ground is so slopey and rocky that I could barely even find a good place to put them!) but I don't think I'll fill them yet, have to get a few more bags of compost.

Today it's off to Lowes to get the cedar for the afterthought 2 x 8 box for tomatoes (in back), squash & watermelons in front. Come to think of it, I'll need more fill for that box too.

Slow start, but getting there! Between the late depressing snow & cold weather and then 2 of my chickens got sick and died and I was researching for days about that issue. If my eggplants don't have a long enough growing season this year, I'll just try them again (earlier) next year.

I'd love to know how you all learned about your beekeeping. I'm taking a class in June, knowing nothing about it.

NH Gardener, would you be able to get a photo of your garden area and
post it here? I would love to see what you are starting with.
We, all of us here in New England that like to get a jump start, are getting going a few weeks later than we wanted, but all is well. As long as it warms up soon you will have some success in your garden. There are still many, many folks who wont put their tomato starts out in the garden until Memorial day.
If you can get a bed done and get your early stuff (peas, beets, chard, spinach, onions) in this week all will be well with those babies.
As to the eggplant, you will probably get fruit, just not early.
Sorry about your birds!!
I am taking a beekeeping class through a local club. We meet once a month for about 6 months. My bees arrive on or about April 23. I would encourage you to find a local club start going to their meetings, if they have speakers do attend those events. Read, read, read. I have found that as many beekeepers I talk to there are as many opinions about how to do things. Go get 'em!
I hope you enjoy the weather today, it's going to be glorious.

camprn - I'm trying to post photos, but hmmm. Is the right place to put them the Gallery? When I try to upload, it says the file is too big or corrupted. I even shrunk the size of the photo and it's still saying that. I'll keep trying, but if there's an easier way or place to put them, that would be great.

Okay, I'm trying this one more time. I think I got the hang of it, I got 3 of my 4 photos to show up on preview, but then I lost them all.

One more time:

I told you this was ugly. Shield your eyes:

Now let me see if I can get the other 3 photos to show up.







And this was the best spot... Anyway, the 2x8 tomato box will go behind the other 4.

NHGardener wrote:When I try to upload, it says the file is too big or corrupted. I even shrunk the size of the photo and it's still saying that. I'll keep trying, but if there's an easier way or place to put them, that would be great.

Sorry for the inconvenience; it's not your error. I will contact the person who contact's the person who can fix it!

boffer - Believe me, it was probably me. I'm guilty of probably breaking the MM Calculator too.

But I followed your directions somewhere here on how to use the host image thing and it worked! Still in shock.

I can't believe the lovely day. Sunny and 64*F so a great day to work in my garden. The forecast for the rest of the week is similar temps, though tonite will drop to 32 but the others will be warmer.
My son made my coldframe for me, 2 by 4' and I put it in the garden in what I call bed #11. Its just a long hilled berm made from leftover garden loam when I first built my nine raised beds.

Its in place beside my 6 alpine strawberries, 3 red and 3 pineapple. I slanted the box a bit from north to south by removing soil on the right and adding it to the left so its not even. I haven't built my lid for it yet (can't find old windows at any yard sales yet) so I just put plastic over it held down with rocks in the corners. It'll be a great place to harden off seedlings and also to start new lettuce plants. I plan to utilize it in the fall to lengthen my harvest with greens like claytonia, arugula, late spinach, mache (corn salad), mizuna.

I also put up my A-frame in bed #9 for the new season. I had to replace one pole that got snapped during a terrible windstorm last fall. In that bed I planted 2 squares of garlic last Columbus Day, 4 per square.

As you can see they came thru the 'buried in snow' winter just fine. All the squares have 4 lovely spots of greenery sprouting.
I'm having a wonderful time today. I'm sure my counterparts in New England are enjoying their day in the garden as well. Go Gardeners!

Hey, NHGardener, its looking good. You'll be so happy with your garden once it gets going.
And chickens. Lucky you. I'd love to have chickens some day.

NHGardener, I LOVE your rocks, I'm sure you dont, but I collect them, hence the name of my blog, rocks in my garden. Just a habit I picked up as a kid, I don't identify them, I just drag them home from every trip.

Haha Valerie - Feel free to come and get em! I do have one special rock in the middle of all of them tho, I think it's quartz crystal, it's amazing and soft, almost like white marble. Wow. And I have several rocks in the house that are just super cool. But those gray granite things you are certainly welcome to.

And quiltbea, chickens are great. They are such pets. Only they can be fragile and when they die you suffer. That's the only thing.

Well the snow is almost gone and tonight the spring peepers are singing their love songs & the salamanders will soon start their migrations across the dangerous roadways. The temperature got up to 59F today and it's been dry a few days so I managed to do spring bed prep. I transplanted into bigger cells poblano and serrano peppers. I have also transplanted out into the garden the wee leek seedlings. The spinach, onions and garlic are all showing new growth. Moving along now, things are going to get busy.

Gorgeous, Camprn!

Okay, this is an update as of today. Boxes had to be staked to level them out, and trellis poles are placed. (There's rebar there - great tip from someone on this forum to use those canning disks to keep the poles from sinking into the ground.)

It's coming along and looking really good NHGardener!!!

Yeah, well we'll see if I can get anything to grow now.

I must confess, I didn't do any of it except screw all the boxes together. I was going to do the rest, but my husband came out of nowhere and whipped it all together. Something about making sure all the boxes were symmetrical (they were measured with line) and the poles being all the same level (they were aligned vertically, etc.) -- yikes. I think my garden is going to give him a heart attack. I hope he lets me actually put plants in there. I'll probably come home and find plastic flowers in there.