It's go time

Spring has arrived with a bang and temperatures of 20 C. For the Slav household this means lots of activity after what felt like centuries of inactivity. So far, we’ve done the onions, the spinach, the peas, and the potatoes, put some tomatoes, leeks, parsnips, and peppers in seedling pots, and are celebrating the appearance of the first cucumbers that have dared sprout.

This is what 600 g of seed onions look like (top two beds). Sure, it’s not very exciting but it will be in a month, and also look at how neat and straight the beds are. Bonus: lower body workout. (The grey layer on the third bed is wood ashes, as of yet unincorporated into the soil. Wood ashes are a great fertiliser in the right dose and we’ve got loads.)

And this is what 15 kg of potatoes look like. There was more lower body workout and much satisfaction after Cat calculated that if last year we got 20 kg from 5 kg of seed material (it was more but we like to be conservative), this year we’re looking at a minimum of 60 kg, even if the summer heat hits early. That’s a lot of mash and roasted taters.

The pea beds look quite similar to the onion beds so we’ll spare you the excitement of the images. We did get a pleasant surprise, meanwhile. Some radishes survived the frost — the ones we sowed last — so we might yet get a dozen or so little red goodies for the spring salads.

In other news, we made our second attempt at raspberries, this time planting them in a place where they will have nice shade in the heat. Not pictured: the walnut tree that will provide the shade.

Survival is still uncertain because we were forced to keep them in their package for a couple of weeks due to the February weather but they look healthy enough so we’re hopeful. Advice for raspberry growing says they grow best on a north-facing slope but since the only thing facing north here is the back of the house and there’s no space for raspberries there, we just put them in the northern part of the garden, facing, alas, south. We’ll see how it goes.

In further other news, all the mint survived the winter, except the patch that Cris ploughed over because he can’t tell mint from weed, the fresias died, yet again, and the first daffodils showed up. They’re tiny but hardy.

In conclusion, here’s a happy pig, that is, cat. See those paw marks? They won’t be there for long once the plants destined for that bed go in.