Spring garden-y things are really starting to pick up here on the farm. Monday was an especially busy day, but as is almost always the case round here, I had some inside plant upkeep to tend to before I wandered into the out.
A few weeks ago, my daughter brought home a couple spider plant cuttings from school. Her ag teacher also teaches botany and has a lot of plants lurking about.
Well, as anyone who tends to plants knows, they make babies, need dividing, cut back, etc, so I was pretty elated when the kiddo brought home the baby spider plant cuttings. I promptly plunked them into a glass of water and neglected them for a few weeks so they would sprout roots.
Which they did.
And that was how I ended up transplanting the little spider plantlings before heading out to put in my peas and other things this past Monday.
I started spider plant transplant journey by rounding up a couple terra cotta pots, then I wandered out to Mount Poovius. We have livestock, thus there is no shortage of compost around these parts. I am just thankful I have a tractor to turn the piles...Oof.
After collecting some compost, I made a layer of bark chunk drainage at the bottom of the pot, then added a layer of compost, then added a layer of soilless starting mix that I had lurking about from the tomato and pepper seeding project.
Next, I transplanted my new little spider plant friends, one of which is going to live in a very challenging environment (my daughter's room😱). Good luck little friend.
But moving day is not going to happen until the little fellas root, so for now they are stationed on top of my dishwasher in indirect light.
That chore done, I wandered out to the garden, my garden grid chart and seeds in a bag that was clasped in my hand. It was a beautiful day out and I am always happy to root around in the dirt.
I then noticed that the hubs had a bunch of jack pine poles on the tractor bucket. Tall ones, like 25 feet or so. It dawned on me that not only was I going to plant peas, but we were also going to trellis the hops plants.
I like multitasking.
So, while the hubs laid out some new jack pine poles to repair the deer netting surrounding my garden (horses are destructive creatures), I cleaned out the pea bed and mixed in some compost to the area.
It was then that the tractor rolled up next to the garden with the new hops trellises. Here's a Kat fact, I do not spend money on anything if I don't have too. Period. Buying fancy hops trellises are not a thing I want to spend cash on, not when I have literal acres of perfectly straight pine trees that always need thinned. And a never-ending supply of baling twine!
So, even though they might not be the most visually stunning things, I kinda adore the new hops trellises, but then again I am more than a bit of a soil-covered, rusticating heathen.
Who also isn't out lots of money on stuff that plants crawl up. Like the plants care anyway lol!
Anyway, after getting the hops all squared away, I started planting peas. I put snow peas on one side (Oregon Giant) and sugar snap on the other (Sugar Sprint). I have planted shelling peas in the past, but we all really enjoy the sugar snap and snow peas more, so I have just been growing them instead.
As I listened to a Cal Newport podcast (love that guy), the smile on my face grew even larger as I spied some volunteer lettuce doing their thing. My kale was also up, and the collards were growing too.
The peas were seeded in no time and I moved on to some intercropping, square foot gardening stuff. I like to plant a grid of radishes, and in the middle of said grid, I like to plant a cabbage. The radishes are quick and keep the weeds suppressed, so that by the time they are harvested the cabbage should be big enough to take over.
This actually works the way it is supposed to sometimes, it's awesome!
Then I put in a couple rows of carrots, turnip greens, and some more lettuce. Thanks to the April Cold Snap Of Stupidness, I am a bit behind on seeding cold weather crops. Which also means I need to get my flintlocks outside and get to planting, because my next project is sowing several hundred row feet of potatoes....Weeeee!
And on that note, I bid you all adios and hope that you got your hands blissfully soil-covered today!
And as most of the time, all of the images were taken on the author's lacking a sense of humor and perpetually covered with hay stems and compost iPhone. The text divider image was made in Canva.