Spring flowers and more planting

Spring seems to have finally arrived and we decided to plant the tomatoes. All of the blush and the crimson sprinter tomatoes we seeded came up and I managed to avoid cooking them while I hardened them off (like last year...). So we plunked them in along with some starters we picked up at Apache (some roma and early girl and beefsteak).

The garlic came up quite suddenly last week and has really jumped ahead. The onions are also now peeking above ground.

We still have a bed in the back where I'm making a determined effort to eradicate the purple bell flower. This stuff is a nightmare. After literally years of fighting it, we're getting the upperhand. But the picture below shows what we're up against: there was 1 inch of growth above ground and 11 or more inches of root (gardening knife is 12 inches of scale).

Only in really loose soil is this kind of extraction possible. In heavier clay, I'm basically stuck topping it and hoping to starve out the tuber. In happier news, the oregano is back and seems to have spread over the winter.

Along with the tomato starts, we also picked up a tomatillo and hot pepper plant. Jess was keen to plant. I questioned her wardrobe choice ("I'm glam-ting!") and, after getting snagged on the black raspberry canes, she saw my point.

The raspberry hedge we put in along the north side of the property is coming up very nicely this year. I'm hopeful we'll get enough to make lots of jam as we ran out this winter).

The peas have come up so we planted the pole beans in behind them to get two crops from this trellis this year.

We're also starting to see the flowering shrubs start. This crab apple tree is one I pass on my daily walk.

Our efforts to move this tulip tarde have only been partly successful and it came up in the back veggy bed again (really thickly) so we'll pull these out when the leaves die back and move more around to plant among the irises.

Rain has kept us inside today but we'll be back out putting on some annual flowers and herbs. Our efforts to grow musk melons were a bust (second year nothing happened so we bought a watermelon start and planted it in the back.