Original post from May Dreams Gardens, May 03, 2008

 Welcome to the Garden Bloggers’ Hoe Down! I am happy and pleased to be your hoestess for this one time event.

This is indeed the place where you leave your comment after you’ve posted about your hoes (or rakes or shovels) on your blog, so we can find you and come visit to see what kinds of hoes you have.

My hoe down started with a bit of grumbling from the hoes having to all be piled in the wheelbarrow together for a quick trip from the garage, around the side of the house, through the gate and into the back yard.

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Original post from Lucky’s Duck Farm, May 03, 2008

Two winters ago we lost our plum tree and after me cutting it down, the stump just sat there. I was using it to prop up a leaky duck pond so the ducks could play under it and at times lay their eggs there.
Today after me looking and say, “I need to dig that out”, Pat took a sledge hammer to it. Nice hole where the tree was and it looks strange no seeing it in the duck run.
Pat then said he was going to make a start on the apricot tree we lost last spring. It was on my to do list and that was as far as it got. 

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Original post from In The Charamon Garden, May 02, 2008

Well, fellow-gardeners, this is what it’s all about! This is why we work to build the soil. This is why we pull the weeds: harvest!

For some unknown reason, my article, “The Garlic Lesson,” posted back in October has been the most popular of all my garden posts with some 868 on-site readers to date (big numbers for me) and growing in popularity. That lesson has served me well and produced a bountiful crop. This picture shows a small portion of it.

For the last two days, I have been digging up the garlic and man, is it beautiful! 

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Original post from Down to Earth, May 02, 2008

I love that first day after work is finished for the week when I get back into the garden again. That space is where I grow too. I have a garden bench out there and I sit and think, talk to the animals, watch the chooks and generally just luxuriate in the natural wonder of it all. Oh, and sometimes I help with the gardening. ; - )

It’s looking good out there now that the plants are starting to put on good growth. The silverbeet in this photo will be picked today for dinner tonight. I love the coloured stems of silverbeet (chard). Here we have rhubarb chard, which is the very dark red one, ruby chard, a lighter brighter red, the plain white stems and hidden in there are yellow stems as well. 

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Original post from Garden Desk, May 02, 2008

I have been extremely busy potting up over 100 tomato plants this week.

I had to transfer them from cell packs to individual peat pots or plastic cups. I wasn’t planning to transplant so many, but lots of my friends and family are interested in my crazy heirloom varieties. I should have stopped saying “sure you can have a few of them” a long time ago. I was hoping to be able to speed things up this year by using soil blocks, but abandoned that effort early on. I don’t have the larger 4 inch block maker yet which I would like for these tomatoes. I try to give these precious little tomato seedlings a lot of room to develop into strong healthy plants. I hope to get the larger soil block maker for next year.As for this year, I have a few more varieties left to transplant today before we leave for the Baker Creek Spring Planting festival in Missouri that I wrote about in the last post.

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Original post from Fluffius Muppetus, May 02, 2008

I went out into the Grow Dome this afternoon with a tray of seedlings that had overgrown the upstairs windowsill (mostly tomatoes) and badly in need of a drink, and the marigold seedlings I didn’t pot up yesterday.

I planted up one tomato (Gartenperle) and one marigold in the Grow Dome, and the rest are waiting to be planted out in windowboxes in a few weeks.

Having done that, I planted out my lettuce trial seedlings into one of the raised beds (there are only 5 left, 4 of them Brown Goldring).

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Original post from Ma Du Diable, April 30, 2008

April is a big sowing month, all the summer crops are sown in pots ready to be planted out in May and the peppers, aubergines and tomatoes sown earlier are all potted on to give them room to grow on before being planted out. Outdoors a little work on the soil will benefit the next crops to go in. I’ve added goat manure, seaweed meal, bone meal and woodashes to our soil ready for planting and sowing. The first direct sown summer crops go in with the French Beans and the last of the storage onions are set out.  Its also time to start sowing the earliest of the winter crops leeks, roots and the first winter brassicas.  It is also time to direct sow flowers in and around the potager, I do it to attract bees and other pollinating insects and for a bit of cheery colour, most of the flowers I plant are also edible or useful in some way so they do work for their space.
 

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Original post from Gardening Tips ‘n’ Ideas, April 30, 2008

 Kris of Blithewold fame asks the question, “Do you have ‘the touch’?” - the green-thumb touch, that is. Are you able to deftly transplant a seedling with an accurate amount of force and pressure that firms its position in the soil and aids its eventual growth? Or, do they end up becoming snail-bait? It’s an intriguing question and one that I’ve not considered much - mainly because I’ve presumed that there is no other way. My ‘touch’ after all, is my touch. How can one change that?

I remember in my cooking apprentice years we would hear stories about great pastry chefs who were able to make sweet pastes in the middle of summer and still result in a perfect tart. These pastries were incredibly hard to work with once the heat escalated but somehow these epicurean geniuses were able to achieve what no other could. As their stories were told they would always be qualified with the line “they had such cold hands”. Regardless of how warm it was their hands were able to withstand the soaring temps and still massage a paste with a deftness one could only admire.

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Original post from Dreams and Bones, May 01, 2008

I must confess to a late start this spring on the preparations for the garden. I have been too much on the move. But Tuesday I made my annual spring pilgrimage to Bath County, VA to gather some tomato plants.

At Longdale Nursery on Route 42 I found Italian Sweets, Better Boys and Belgian Giants. Then my friends at Walatoola were kind to share some of THEIR starter tomatoes with me. I added some Boxcar Willies, Little Momas, Principe Borgheses, and some of their green peppers suited for northern climate. They also gave me a gift of a lovely lemon verbena not to mention a healthy bundle of their first asparagus harvest and fresh arugula. 

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Original post from Compost Bin, May 01, 2008

One of the best plant purchases that I’ve made in the past few years was buying these blueberry bushes. I’ve had berries every year since buying them except when I had to do an emergency transplant to their current location because of my pool renovation. And since then, they recovered nicely and are very productive once again.

And when blueberry plants flower up like this in the spring, that means that berries are on the way. Sure, we won’t be eating them for a few months but just knowing that they’re on the way is nice.

When the berries do arrive this summer, I plan on getting my share. My kids are notorious for swooping in and eating all the berries before anyone else gets any. I’ve found that the best solution to that problem is to plant more berries. 

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