Recycled plastic bottles covering seedlings & more Easter tulips

This week has been rainy with wild temperatures after the snow last week. The spring flowers are blooming around the yard. If course the tulips are blooming one by one for the last two weeks, along with daffodils, violets, and the fruit trees.

Plum tree 

Peach tree blooming

In between rains, I worked in the garden, cleaning up the beds and adding garden soil to them. With the plastic bottles I collected from people-- I'm putting them in the garden beds to protect the cabbage I transplanted today.

The bottles act as a mini greenhouse for the plants, and they will keep my cat from digging up the garden bed. The 2 liter bottles are covering the Early Jersey and golden acre cabbage seedlings, while the 16 fl oz bottles and tops are covering the Easter egg radishes and spinach seed I sowed directly in the soil. To the left of the seedlings, Early Alaskan peas are pushing through the soil.

The next day I finished the second garden bed by transplanting more cabbage and collard seedlings aand sowing radish, spinach, and pea seed.

Also I have been going to the woods collecting large stones and wood. The wood is to frame the garden beds and the stones are being saved to make part of the cob shed (if I ever get around to building it.) For now I'm piling the stones around garden beds, fruit trees and bushes.

The beginning of April is a busy month for early gardeners, as I have more tomatoes to sow, including peppers indoors, and transplanting the greens and tomatoes I've been hardening off in the outside greenhouse/porch.

Early girl tomatoes

Basil

Wild Spring onion soup & spring rolls recipe

I haven't done a recipe post in a long time, but these are two healthy and hearty recipes that are low cost and fast to make.

It's Spring time, and there are wild green onions all over the yard and garden. I carefully choose the onions that are safe from traces of animal, then with a spoon I dig up the whole onion including the roots. Then I soak the onions in water for 5 minutes to thoroughly clean them. Afterwards, I cut the roots and skin the onions, then finely chop.

I use the bulb and most of the green stem in the soup and the green tops as a garnish. Then while the water is boiling, add wheat or rice noodles with the onions, salt, garlic powder, and nutritional yeast. If you're using udon, ramen, rice, or korean wheat noodles, then the soup will only take 5 minutes. Here I'm using Sempio brand wheat noodles that cook within 5 minutes. Ramen noodles are not healthy so I don't recommend using them.

Wild spring onion soup (vegan)

Handful of noodles
2 cups of water, boiled
3 wild green onions, chopped
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp garlic powder and salt
Garnish with the chopped green onions tops and spring roll filling

Spring roll filling (vegan)

Spring roll wraps
Spiralized zucchini
Spiralized carrot
Soy sauce
Lettuce

First boil water to dip the wrappers one by one. Then dip each in cold water before adding the filling. For the filling, spiralize zucchini and carrots and fry them in a skillet with a little oil and soy sauce. You can add any other veggies here or greens like kale, and chop the veggies any way you prefer. Dip each wrapper in the hot then cold water and lay flat. Add the filling then lettuce and roll. The soy sauce I used is the healthy alternative, and the dipping sauce I used was spicy peanut.

Elegant Spring Flowers, Snow in the Woods, & Blooming fruit trees

Throughout the early Spring as the snow and cold have come in phases, I have covered the fruit trees in blankets or tree covers and any cloth I have laying around. I even covered the flowers too. Here are some pictures I took of the flowers before and after the snow, and I even took pictures of the snow in the woods and the blooming activity at night after a long day's rain. 

nectarine blooming at night

nectarine trees are blooming 

old peach tree is blooming but the younger two are not

plum tree blooming

younger plum tree blooming

Pear trees blooming but the cherry trees have yet to do so

tulips growing under both pear trees as well

this is about 100 tulips are growing at different stages, but the ones blooming are early varieties

Sewed early peas & fruit trees coming to bloom

Yesterday I sewed peas in one hugelkultur bed outside. The variety is Early Alaska pea, so I figured they could tolerate the early March weather until the Spring gets warmer. I didn't water the peas because I'm letting the rain take care of that chore for me. In the pic below, I cleaned up these two beds where I will grow plants that I have started indoors in addition to the row of peas I sewed in the bed on the right.

Sewed peas after growing broccoli last fall 

Fruit trees around the garden are budding as well and will bloom soon, such as the Plums, Pears, Peaches and Nectarines. The blueberries are budding too so they're going to bloom soon. The cherries are may bloom after the cold hardy fruit trees bloom.

Pear budding & cherry tree behind pear

Pears, cherries, plums, figs

The tulips and daffodils are still slow to bloom because of the long period of cold weather. The Parrot tulips and Aphrodite varieties are growing under the pear trees, but I'm not sure they'll flower as much as they did two years ago.

Parrot tulips under pear

Aphrodite tulips under pear

Nectarines & peach trees are budding too

This variety of tulips is my favorite: Happy generation

I don't expect the young goji berries, aronia and the younger blueberry plants to fruit for another couple of years so I'm not as concerned with keeping them covered from frost. But the goji plants are leafing out already along with the raspberries. The raspberries may flower within the next month as they are a everbearing variety that have summer and fall harvests.

Spring flowers blooming photos

Hyacinths

Daffodils

 This week the nights are in the 20s, so I'm keeping the tulips covered. But I can tell that they're getting ready to bloom and I wish I could keep them uncovered. Eventually I won't be able to keep them covered because the blooms will bend and the neck of the flower will break. This time of the month has uncertain weather patterns but I'm going to take the covers off in a couple of days.

Tulips about to bloom, but keeping them covered this week 

The wolf dog looking stoic

Granny decorated her burning bush with eggs

Early March starter plants under grow lights

The starter plants are a couple weeks old. I have been keeping them under a grow light in my kitchen. On the warm days, I take the starters out to the porch greenhouse and then back in at night. These are cauliflower, varieties of cabbage, and collards. I used potting soil mixed with seed starting mix for the starters and keep lights on the plants for over 10 hours. The amount of light varies depending on when I wake up and go to bed because I don't have the lights on a timer.

As I was passing the greenhouse center where I usually get truckloads of mulch, I bought three Early Girl Tomatoes and put them with the starters. I also have cilantro, basil, onions, and carrots growing as well.

Soon I will sew other tomato varieties indoors in recycled water bottles because they're bigger containers than typical starter cells and pots. I tend to start tomatoes and peppers indoors early in March, but I end up regretting starting early because they'll grow better, faster, stronger if I threw out a bunch of seed in the summer instead.

Come April, I'll have greens transplanted outside in the garden and I'll have summer crops started indoors. Tuesday I sewed lettuce varieties indoors along with radish, swiss chard, broccoli, so we'll see their progress in a month, and I'll transplant them outside with the cabbage and cauliflower.

Garden artistry, transplanted tulips under peach trees

Today was another warm and sunny afternoon. I happened to be gifted tulips today so I transplanted tulips under two peach trees.

I squeezed in some other gardening and other garden artistry today as well--collecting rocks for pathways and placing around more blueberry plants; I sewed basil too; and I chitted potatoes to be planted in the grow bags come Good Friday.

In gardening, you have to take advantage of the weather at all times-- you never know when there will be a long cold and/or rainy week.