April 15th 2014 Garden update/What's growing on & Gardening Tasks

The blueberry bushes, peach trees, pear trees, and plum tree and grape vines are blooming. The fig and cherry trees are not showing much sign of life, but I have some hope for them.

Peach tree blooming (20+ years old)

 Ground violets are covering my Mom's yard and many other neighboring yards...no need to mow a beautiful lawn...The hyacinths are growing lovely. Our rock wall is coming along slow, but it is the least of my worries.

hyacinths

Rock wall for smothering ivy/thorns/weeds

It has been raining every 2-3 days; so I have been collecting rain water in tubs and buckets for watering my starter plants.

My partner James and I have been busy in the last two weeks. In between rains we have aerated the soil for our potato garden by shoveling and tilling. So far we have hoed six wide rows and planted 75 lbs of potatoes (25 lb of Ukon Gold and 50 lb of Kennebec potatoes).
We have another 50 lb of Kennebec potatoes we must plant after the upcoming rain. It's supposed to rain Monday and snow on Tuesday, so I will be back to hoeing and tilling on Thursday, hopefully the garden will be dry by then.

Last week I had planted cantaloupe, watermelon, and tomatoes in starter containers; and sewed varieties of lettuce, kale, spinach, and peas in my garden.

Varieties of greens that went in the garden

Tomatoes sprouting in cantaloupe starters, haha

Starter containers of watermelon and cantaloupe

Last week I also mentioned (here) that I transplanted what I thought was squash and cucumber seedlings. Unfortunately as they sprouted their third and fourth leaves, I realized they were weeds! What a disappointment, but I ripped all of them up and planted cantaloupe and tomatoes in the tubs. 

Ripping up weeds for tomato starting containers

Tomato and cantaloupe starting containers with
glass lids for solarium effect

In larger pots I planted peas, spinach, and herbs (mint and parsley). The peas have already sprouted in just a couple of days, whereas my garden peas have not thought about sprouting (after a week)!

Pots of spinach, peas, and herbs

Overall I have been focusing much attention to the potato garden and our strawberry gardens. We have a total of three strawberry beds. The picture below is our third bed that we constructed with logs, dirt from around the yard, and compost on top. Several weeks ago I filled a second strawberry bed of most of the compost I had left too.

This is actually the third strawberry bed we made

This is the first strawberry bed we made out
of logs and compost/mulched with leaves and
 pine needles

Total of 18 strawberry plants!

We may find more logs in the woods to construct a fourth strawberry bed, but we'll see as I have many tasks ahead of me...

In the upcoming weeks I will be transplanting tomato and pepper starters in the ground.
At the beginning of May I will be planting Non-GMO varieties of beans.
My cousin Lisa and her son want us to shovel and till a garden at her house, so I will find the time to do that in the following weeks. I'm sure she only wants a couple of rows for beans and tomatoes. Very simple.

At the beginning of May, I will also be planting corn across the road from my Grandparent's house.
In one garden (at my grandparent's house), I will sewing cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, butternut squash, beans, and (perhaps) more lettuce or other types of greens directly in the ground.
Later towards June I will transplant my watermelon and cantaloupe starters in my garden (at my Mom's house).

Leaves for mulch

 As I have said, I have taken on little side projects when I am not planting potatoes or greens in the garden, or starting tomato and melons indoors. For example, I am working on the rock wall in front my of my Mom's house which is usually taken over by ivy and thorny bushes. I have been working on the strawberry beds, and collecting rain for watering pepper, tomato, and melon starters. Well I have also hauled lots of leaves with trash bags from the woods, in order to mulch the garden, but I have been using the leaves to mulch the fruit trees and bushes. It's a good thing I did too (and covered the strawberry bed) because Kentucky got a snow and ice last night. It was 83 degrees yesterday!
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Actually I talk about seasonal tasks in the garden, what to plant at this time; and also what foods produce the best in the video below. If you're interested, feel free to watch. :)

I have another video I made today, I will have to upload to YT before posting to here.