When Should Do Becomes Must Do

The garden is now moving along quickly. All the fruit trees are in bloom. The apple in the foreground is always reliable and always has a huge amount of blooms. The pear in the background gives us big yields every other year. This is an on year. I don't spray these trees, we just eat around the blotches. Our young cherry tree has a total of eleven blooms on it. This is pathetic except when you consider that last we we had six blooms on it and one cherry (which a bird got.) Hopefully this year we might get enough for a handful of fruit, LOL.

The garage sale lasted all of two hours this morning. Right after the boys came back from hockey we realized someone had stolen all the signs so we bagged it and focused on other things. It was a good move. My list of "should do soon" has recently changed to a list of "must do now"!

First on the must do list, I accomplished during the garage sale hours. That was seed starting for all of the heat lovers. Three kinds of cukes, two kinds of watermelon, patty pan white squash and cilantro were all started in pots. I start these in pots because our season is shorter and with forty degree nights, the ground is still too cold for these. These will stay inside until it's time to harden them off. I'm hoping I started them in big enough pots that I won't have to muck with potting them up.

Next on the must do list, deer proofing the chard. Their prints were all over this bed today and a few chard were ripped out or severely chomped. I'm trying a light row cover over this area for a week or so to see if that will make them move on. I hate row covers. They look like hell but I'll deal with the fug for a little bit until the plants get bigger. In the meantime, I planted more chard in another area just in case.

This bed is doing pretty well. All the onions and carrots are up. The endive, baby romaine, bok choi and red lettuce look great. The purple cabbage is healthy looking but not growing much. We'll see what the row cover does for it.

Also on the must do list today was leek planting. I put 32 of them into the ground in four different locations. I like spreading crops around the garden for a couple of reasons. It makes it look less like a veggie garden and if pests, varmits or kid feet trash one area, there is still hope for some yield in another area. The leeks took a few hours because I had to make another trip to the stables for manure. No musing this time, mostly just swearing at mosquitoes.

Bean planting was also on the list of get it done yesterday. I'm not exactly sure how this went. My ten year old helped. She was planting purple bush, asian pole and contender bush. I think she might have mixed up the poles and the bush types. Not too huge a deal since both were planted around the bean teepee. We may just have to stretch the poles a bit to reach a support. I'll be happy if they sprout. I soaked the beans first before planting them and then read this morning that this isn't the best way to go. Sigh. Hopefully a replant won't be indicated.

Today started a few trial season pushing attempts as well. I set-up a wall-o-water (aka earwig hotel) and put two peppers (King of the North ) in it. This was mostly an experiment to prove to myself once and for all that these things are not worth it. I did need to clear some things out the the coldframe though, so next to the wall-o-water and cozying up to a brunnera, I planted basil serata. Basil purple ruffles went into a couple of planters in higher heat areas and basil Magical Michael went into the kitchen bed as well as under the row cover next to the chard.

The other zone pushing that went on was to put a Bay leaf into a container, with matina tomato and a few marigolds . This is the only tomato currently in the garden. I want to wait at least another week before putting out any numbers.

I think with today's accomplishments I can safely say that what remains on the list is again should do rather than must do. At least for the next few days!