Late Winter Garden Update
Mid-February is late winter around here. We can still have cold weather and snow for at least two more months, but the worst of the sustained winter weather is now behind us. We will probably have up and down weather in March and April. It was really pretty today, though. Someone asked me this morning if I was ready for gardening, so I thought I'd write about gardening topics.
I finally got around to cleaning out my tomato plants from last year. I was really busy with church and family things from early November on. Since we had such a warm fall all the way until the temperature dropped like a rock Thanksgiving weekend, I never got a chance to clean that part of the garden out. It was an ugly sight every time I looked at it. I'm happy to have that cleared out now. The rest of the garden had layers of mulch with oats planted as a cover crop. It is good to be caught up now.
Right now, we have taps in our maple trees for gathering syrup. We had two good days of collecting, before the weather warmed up too much. We're waiting on the temperature to drop back down to gather again. I find it funny to have taps with tubes running out of the trees. It looks like a joke or gag from Green Acres. Once we gather enough, I'm planning on boiling it outside this year for the first time.
I pruned our fruit trees this weekend. I usually try to do it a bit earlier, but we had other family events like a funeral on top of the cold, snowy weather. I prefer the tidiness of the apple trees that I have pruned in a high-density orchard style. The peach trees have an open shape that I don't care. They get very unruly but Emma likes them better.
I started onion seeds over the weekend because they have to be started early. This year, we have only Red Burgundy and Spanish Sweet Yellow Utah Jumbo. I often do another, but didn't find it at the store.
I am prepping for compost season too. I have kept a bin filled with shredded leaves from the fall, but I will spread it in the different gardens soon. I will fill the compost bin with the gumballs from our sweet gum trees along with shredded leaves, vegetable scraps, and coffee scraps. It made a really good compost last year. I learned a better way to make compost at our extension center gardening day last year.
Our local extension center has a gardening day in late March. I really enjoy that and like having friends that I meet there that have nothing to do with church. Not because I don't like our church or like being a pastor, but it is good to have a life outside of work. Gardening has been that for me.