spring has sprung!

Nearly all of the snow is gone. We had a great winter, full of sledding, shoveling, and snowmen. I am so glad spring is upon us, though, because that means that garden fruit and vegetables will be here soon! Yesterday we sowed the first of the golden yellow snow peas as well as spinach and strawberry spinach. Inside, I have some tomatoes, tomatillos, and herbs started, and greens for munching on while we wait for spring to really kick in. This is what the yellow peas looked like last year:

It will be awhile before we are tasting their delightfully sweet crunch, but in the meantime we have plenty to do! Before dropping in seeds, we needed to till under the overwintering cover crop, rye:

I have planted hairy vetch as well but it didn't thrive like the rye did. We added compost as well. You can see the compost bins in the background here:

Above you can see where we cleaned up the blueberry patch. The kids fed and watered them. They helped feed our shrubs and bulbs out front as well as move compost around. I am so glad they know where so much of their food comes from and that we have the space to have a fairly extensive garden. We get to observe the life cycle of plants from seed to fruit, and then save the seeds again for the next year. We also get to watch the compost break down food scraps we can't use. I hope that when H&F grow up, they will have gardens to share with their own children.

It sure felt hot after so many hours of yard work, so I brought the kids out a treat:

Each year I try to grow something new and take a break from something else I've grown before. There will always be lots of herb; this year I am adding lime basil to the mix. In addition, I'll have the usual oregano, lemon basil, sweet basil, mint, thyme, sage, rosemary, lemon balm, dill, and possibly marjoram. I am growing strawberry spinach for the first time this year and ordered a new winter squash as well. Hopefully the squash vine borers will find someone else's garden to attack this year, but if not, I will have to deal with them as well. There will be June, yellow, and everbearing strawberries, tomatoes and tomatillos in many, many varieties, summer and winter squash, greens, radishes, and maybe brassicas again. I split the rhubarb off yesterday so hopefully that will grow happily. I am not going to grow beans or corn this year, and might skip carrots and parsnips as well. What will be growing in your garden?