Potatoes, carrots and a retaining wall

It was a busy week in the garden as spring is turning to summer. We finished planting the north bed with carrots and beets. Just waiting for some trellis to come in to put the beans in (also for things to get a bit warmer).

Around the side, the spinach is up! No sign of the lettuce yet.

The chives we transplanted are also doing well.

A trip into the under-stair storage area suggested the potatoes were ready to go into the ground!

Jess is always keen on potato day. Such a tiny amount of work for such a big return in the autumn. This is (I think) the fourth year we've been able to provide most of our own seed stock (Caribe blue),

We put in about 40 plants in the front yard. A few russets were also dropped in from a bag that went leggy in the kitchen.

Jess is never happier than when she's in charge of the potatoes.

Around the side, we also finished rehabbing these beds. We used some old bricks to create a retaining wall (veggies above, flowers below). This connected to the stone walls Jess and Jenn built a last fall.

I did the basic planning of the wall and laid the first row. I then left it to Jess while I went to get some dirt. I figure it would take her 40 minutes to build the wall. But it was done in the time it took me to land one wheelbarrow. Some more onions were also planted.

I'v also been radically paring back an alpine currant hedge that has sprawled out of control. This has meant lots of burning before the fire pit and the garage come down.

Baking and early seeding

After a flame out last year (blogging, not gardening), I'm back with renewed conviction this year.

We've been baking quite a bit more since we're indoors so much. This week, I used up several jars of pie filling we canned last summer.

I've also gotten back into bread making (bridging us between grocery runs, mostly). This week, I plan to try some buns.

Spring has been late so we've been pining for the yard. About two weeks ago, we planted spinach seeds on the new beds we made on the south side of the house. The old garage is coming down this spring, so we moved the backyard soil last fall.

We've also been growing some veggies from the butts. I've always known celery and leeks would re-grow but never had the time or interest to try. So far, we have one celery plant and two leeks doing well. I have a second celery plant in water to develop some roots.

As the snow has receded (rapidly in the past few days), the south beds have become much easier to work. Some chives that survived the move have some up.

We were also able to smooth out the dirt we dumped last fall and plant some onion sets. I have a bit of retaining wall to build here this week from some bricks we recovered from the back.

We had a huge garlic harvest last year. We've been eating as much as we can and we supply out own see last fall. But we still have 30 heads left. We tried roasting (meh?) so I'll be looking at incorporating it into some buns, I think.

The front garden is almost melted out this week and it looks like summer is here. It is too earlier for potatoes (soil still frozen) bit we could likely get some lettuce and some peas in the ground and the remaining lawn cleaned up.