It's spring...no it's winter...no it's spring!

At the time of my last post, March 31, it was 80 degrees. The windows stayed open, my plants were happily coming out, and the lilacs down the road were georgous. Then we packed up for Oklahoma to celebrate Easter and it snowed! It felt like January for a whole week. When I got back, half of my peas and my crape myrtle looked dead. The broccoli didn't look much better. The other seedlings were fortunately just suspended in time. And my Bradford pear trees were starting to turn color. I'm sure they were thinking summer was rather short this year.

I was really worried about this setback. Fortunately my strawberries had been brought inside, but what was I going to do if all my plants died.? So, I saw on the news that night that I should fertilize my shrubs and they would be as good as new. Now that the warm temperatures are here to stay (hopefully), my roses are starting new canes and leaves, and there is a new cane from the crape myrtle as well. I'm hoping that it will have new growth on the original shrub though. I want it to grow up to be a tree, not bushy.

Since the broccoli was turning red and yellow, I determined they needed some nitrogen. At least I think so. In the end I couldn't decide which would be better, so I got a combonation of bone & blood meal to fertilize the peas & broccoli. Hopefully, next week I will see a good improvement.

Now that it's warm again, the lettuce and carrots and everything else are growing happily again. It looks like I will have to replant part of a row of romaine and peas. Hopefully, it's not too late for that. We'll see what happens.

This week I bought my vegi plants for containers: bush cucumbers, Mr. Stripey tomato, roma tomato, bell pepper, and eggplant. I haven't gotten them planted yet, so that will be my first project this next week.

I also am finally setting aside my kitchen scraps for compost. I've been wanting to compost for some time, and I finally found a good container to save the kitchen scraps in and seal pests out. I am trying to collect a lot of various organic matter in a hurry so that I can start my lasagne bed in the next couple of weeks.

I did get zinnas planted in my front flower bed. It looks like the free poppies I got will never come up. Oh well, you get what you pay for. I also got the bed in front of the office dug up. I need to break up the clay and maybe add some good soil and then I will plant sunflowers there. That will be project #2 next week.

And to end on a happy note, I harvested my first spinach of this spring today. We enjoyed a wonderful spinach and sliced egg salad with a Greek Vinigrette dressing for supper. Yummy with no recalls in sight. Isn't organic wonderful?

To Remember: I have been enjoying a wonderful couple of blogs by FarmGirl. She left her city life in southern California to homestead in Missouri. She now is an organic sheep farmer with a few cows and a huge garden. Amazingly, she has time to be a gormet chef at home and teach cooking classes. Her blogs are: Farmgirl Fare & In My Kitchen Garden

Today's readings influenced me to try Swiss Chard and to check out The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward C. Smith.