Spring Planting at the Hartford Homestead

Well, it’s that time of year when I start getting the urge to play in the dirt. The mornings are still chilly, but the afternoons are getting wonderfully bright and warm. I’m excited to get out and start working the soil, getting it ready for the garden that I have been planning (at least in my head) for well over a month now. I was brought up in a family that always put out a garden in the spring, so I have loved growing things for as long as I can remember. This is proving especially useful now that we are trying to embrace a more natural, sustainable, and healthy way of living, which includes growing a lot of our own produce (hopefully). Living in the Midwest, it’s always a gamble how early to start the garden without Mother Nature throwing me for a sore trick and frosting off everything the weekend after I plant it. But I figure, “What the heck!” I like to live dangerously. I laugh in the face of frosty mornings and 19 degree nights. So, what did I do three weeks ago? I went to Home Depot, Lowes, and our local feed mill and bought more seeds than I care to own up to and came home and started tilling. Actually, tilling isn't the right word. More like spade-ing and hoeing and raking. I should really think about getting a tiller, or at least a garden weasel or something. My method was NOT the most effective. But two and a half weeks later, I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my first seedlings of the year.

          

Here in the city, we don’t have a lot of room for things like gardening (and chickening and rabbiting), so we have to learn how to squeeze in as much in as little space, as well as making that space as functional as it is pretty to look at. That is why we are trying to combine different methods of planting this year. We have a small plot right off of the back deck where we had a flower garden last year. This year we are using that space and trying to blend ornamentals like coreopsis, coneflower, echinacea, and violas with early season edibles, like kale, cabbage, beets, carrots, and radishes.  

I love the homemade pie tin scarecrows.  They give the
space a little something something, don't you think?

What can I say, our trip to Monticello last summer inspired me to think more creatively about the way we used our gardening space. If you have never been, go. Seriously, it is crazy awesome. I mean it. GO! 

 

  

   

See what I mean?!?! This place is Uh-MAZ-ing! Serious case of garden envy!

Back by the chickens (aka-the hoodlums that are required by some unspoken chicken law to either eat or unearth any green thing that dares cross their paths), but well outside of their reach through the fence, is a small area where we have containers and planters. Previously, we have only planted flowers and the occasional basil plant in here, but this year I think we are branching out. I’m really excited to try some companion planting and incorporating some trellises. Maybe more herbs, but also beans, peas, and perhaps some other vining thing, like squash or melons. My only concern is the watering issue-those things need water like every day… sometimes twice a day. We’ll see. I think it can be done, and as I said earlier, I like to live dangerously!   

Here, one of the villains is caught in the act!!!  Alas, she was thwarted 

 because our plants are tucked away safely out of reach in their pots.

We also have a pretty decent lawn (although you wouldn't know it to see it now) that is lined on both sides by low hedges of some variety of shrub that would like to remain anonymous. I am planning on running a row of beans (Yep, just ONE!) along one side, and a row of something decorative, and possibly edible (I’m thinking nasturtiums), along the other side. I know, I know… this idea sounds good in theory; I just hope that it works out as well as the picture in my head-you know, with morning sunlight sparkling on the crystalline dew that’s lightly covering plentiful golden, red, yellow, and orange flowers while bees buzz away happily and choirs of angels sing...

ET helps scan the terrain and think up ways to best utilize our space.
He thinks the grass should hurry up and and get green for its big Spring reveal...
And I wholeheartedly agree.

In the areas of the yard where we don’t get too awful much sunshine, I’ve decided to take a laissez-faire approach.  Before, I would always research plants that liked the shade.  I would plot out how and where I was going to plant this and that.  Finally, after many hours spent reading, drafting, digging, and planting, come July, everything except the hostas and daylilies would have long since shriveled and died.  Disappointed, I thought to myself, “Well, at least the hostas and the lilies are doing well.  They can always spread and fill in these spaces.”  And that might have been exactly what happened... that is, if the backyard hoodlums (aka-the scourge of flower beds and vegetable patches) wouldn’t have come along and turned my hosta and lily garden into a recreation of Kansas in the 1930s, without so much as a backward glance or a “Thank you for the delicious gourmet salad bar!”  So, this year, I bought several different seed packets (and by several, I actually mean way more than several) that contain a mixture of annuals and perennials that “love” the shade.  I tilled the plots.  Well, not tilled…  I spade-ed, hoed, and raked the plots, scattered what probably amounts to somewhere in the neighborhood of a million seeds, and scattered some straw.  I watered them and said a little prayer for the best.  Cross your fingers!

Ursula likes to try her hand at multi-functionality from time to time. Here, she
can be found re-purposing a planter that once contained basil, marigolds, and vining sweet potatoes into a favorite bath and meditation location.  "A little privacy, if you please!"

So, this year, I bought several different seed packets (and by several, I actually mean way more than several) that contain a mixture of annuals and perennials that “love” the shade. I tilled the plots. Well, not tilled… spade-ed, hoed, and raked the plots, scattered what probably amounts to somewhere in the neighborhood of a million seeds, and scattered some straw. I watered them and said a little prayer for the best. Cross your fingers!

  

                        Here are some of the areas tucked away under their straw 
                 "blankets," and by blankets I mean a few metric tons of hay that 
                      are scattered willy-nilly about the yard, covering anything 
              and everything that might get frosted off here in the next few weeks.

Speaking of straw, the yard is covered in it! Three weeks ago, we spent the better part of a Saturday (or maybe a Friday) raking up leaves, gumballs, shrub trimmings, and walnuts that had accumulated in various nooks and crannies over the past Fall and Winter. We filled up two yard waste dumpsters, stood with our hands on our hips, and admired our handy-work, quite pleased with ourselves and thinking we were the kings of the early Spring time clean-up.  

 

It was the same warm weekend that I decided to plant some of my early spring veggies, as well as over 100 violas and a few random bulbs that had started sprouting. That following Sunday night, Mother Nature was up to her old chicanery and the temps for the coming week were to be no higher than 30 degrees, with lows in the teens.  #&%^#&*!!! So, off I went to the feed mill to buy three bales of hay to cover up all the little sprouts, shoots, bulbs, buds, and anything else that dared poke its little green self above the ground.  

           

                       Apparently, these guys like to live dangerously as well, popping up 
                        well before the last frost date for the Spring, April 15th 
                                (according to Ye Olde Farmer's Almanac).

Now, three bales of hay may not sound like much, and while it is still baled, it really doesn’t look like that much either. But let me tell you, balers these days must be a true feat of engineering to be rivaled only by a sausage maker that could fit 10 pounds of meat into a 3 pound casing. And of course, I didn’t open up one bale at a time. Why on Earth would I do that!? Let’s open them all up at once and throw away the twine! And that’s exactly what I did. So, after I covered up all the things that I felt were in danger of freezing, I stood and contemplated what to do with my remaining 2 ½ bales of straw. Why not just leave them here, and if I need more, I can get it and use it? That sounds like a terrific idea-right? Well, it would have been… if I hadn’t missed the part of the weather forecast that warned of 90 mile an hour wind gusts that night (Ok, maybe 90 mph is a slight exaggeration, but if you saw the straw that I had to clean up, you would wonder why you didn’t hear on the news about the tornado that ripped through South City and only touched down in only one family’s backyard).  

Oh well, it has given me something to do for the past two weeks while I’ve been eagerly awaiting the emergence of my seeds. I have been checking on them every day. Occasionally, I give a little pep talk, words of encouragement, a few threats… but so far, they have been reticent in their desire to stay hidden. If a watched pot never boils, a watched radish seed will sprout just to spit in your eye before going back underground and refusing to grow many further. But this morning, guess what I found!?!? You guessed it! My proclamations that my seeds must have been no good, that I must have over-watered them, that Mother Nature murdered them in cold...blood (?) have finally been proven wrong. Now, to sit back and wait for the rest of the little dudes to show up to the party.

This time of year always makes me think of my grandpa. Every Spring, after he would get home from work, he and I (and grandma and mom, too!) would be out in the backyard, tilling up our garden, getting it ready for the plants that we put out every year: tomatoes, beans, zucchini, beans, cabbage, beans, peas, carrots, beans, radishes, spinach, beans, squash, and sometimes, even corn!  Did I mention beans?!?! (The second thing I remember about gardening growing up was that every day or two from about mid-July to the end of August, you have to pick beans. Now if you have a one row, you might think to yourself, “Easy! I got this!” But if you have three, four, five rows of beans or more, “Easy!  I got this!” quickly becomes, “Why did I plant all these &#^@#$! beans?!” after about a row and a half in the blinding 95 degree sunshine. But I digress…) While Spring has never been my favorite season, it will forever hold a special place in my heart because of the time I spent with my family planting our garden. I learned so many things, not just about plants, but about my family, and also life: family stories about this great-grandfather, or that great-aunt; old-fashioned wisdom passed down to me from my grandparents, who both grew up on farms during the Great Depression; extra time with my mom, who worked a lot when I was growing up; and a love for the outdoors and seeing our hard work turn into something rewarding that we could be proud of. It means so much to me that I got to spend this time with them, especially now that grandpa is no longer with us and I live 5 hours away from mom and grandma. I am thankful for everything that I was taught and am excited to use it to help us live a little better, a little healthier, and a little more sustainably here at the Hartford Homestead.