The Modern Victory Garden

It was really beautiful out today.   No rain, some sunshine, and warm enough that a simple sweatshirt was all that was needed to be comfortable working outside.   Had to do some grocery shopping this morning but once I got home and put everything away, I went straight outside to enjoy the nice weather and get some early season garden tasks taken care of that had been on hold due to too much rain lately.                                

I wrote in my blog entry last night how much the garlic had grown in the past few days.   Since I was out in the garden in the dark last night I could not share pictures, but today I took a few photos of them.   This is the elephant garlic.   

And this is the patch of regular garlic (Inchelium Red).                        

Today, I did some weeding in the asparagus, cranberry, onion/garlic, strawberry, and the rhubarb & bush pie cherry beds.   After these beds were weeded, I side dressed the plantings with some general-purpose organic fertilizer and lightly scratched it into the soil.   I also fertilized the container plantings of blueberries.   While I was weeding I noticed that the rhubarb crowns have new growth emerging.   They don't look like much right now, but it will not be long before we can start enjoying some fresh rhubarb once again.              

I also did the annual strawberry patch "tidy up" today as well.   This involves removing a lot of the spent vegetation that overwintered from last year as well as the vegetation that had actually died back.   I try to generally clear out the area surrounding the crowns of the plants - leaving a good growing point and the young emerging vegetation intact.   After the bed was all cut back and tidied up, I fertilized it with a good all-purpose organic fertilizer.   Here's what one of the beds looked like before I cleaned it up.    

And here it is afterwards.                                                     

It may seem counter intuitive to remove what appears to be green vegetation from these plants, but removing older vegetation and decaying material opens up the plants to better air circulation and makes room for the new growth.   

I also bottom watered all of the seedling trays today too. Took them outside on the lawn to make the job easier.                                         

While I was in the shop, I planted up two 6-packs of Merlot lettuce and put them on the heat mat to germinate.                                        

The primary task I want to get done this weekend, is to turn over the green manure crop of crimson clover in the large 40'X4' bed.   I did half of the bed today and plan to do the other half tomorrow.   It only took a half hour of work to do half the bed, but after a winter of relative inactivity I am playing it safe and breaking the work into two sessions so as not to strain my back.   I made a short video to show how I do this simple annual early spring task.   

                

Here's the bed after I wrapped up this afternoon.                              

The sunshine and fresh air are like a tonic.   Seeing the emerging new growth on the rhubarb, strawberries, garlic, onions, and the bud swell on the bush pie cherries definitely makes me feel quite invigorated.   Hopefully my back will not give me a reality check tomorrow from my exertions today!