Things are ready to bust out

It went from winter to spring like a switch had been flipped.  Good thing because I had used up the last of the firewood when the cold finally quit.  The last several days have been not only pleasant but downright superb.  The catfish and bluegill are back and are actively feeding.  The frogs are making some noise but are far from full chorus.  I’m still waiting on some of the hostas to poke through the soil.  Probably shouldn’t be concerned but last year’s heat was really hard on plants.  It probably wasn’t the best year to do landscaping and buy all those plants as many of them suffered badly in the heat.

Going from a winter setup back to normal is a lot of work (yeh I consider winter abnormal).  Last week I dismantled and cleaned the wood stove, cleaned the flue pipe, covered the top so no more bluebirds can get in, and spread the wood ashes on the pasture.  The chains were taken off the garden tractor tires.  Before the mower could be attached the blades had to be put back on and before that could be done they had to be sharpened.  I chose not to pay the shop to sharpen them so I bought a bench grinder – it will pay for itself quickly enough and has a million uses.   That’s how it’s been going – every job I start first requires doing another task, then another task, etc, etc.

 
The compost bin was turned over by inverting the modules and shoveling the compost into the newly made bin, as described in this post.  Because of the extended cold weather none of the compost was finished.  After turning the pile over the oldest compost is now on top and with the warmer weather it is now a hot pile, so some of it should finish in a few weeks.  This year I’ll just put the finished compost into the squash, potato and tomato/pepper beds since the rest of the beds have been planted already. 

I took the plastic greenhouse off the greens bed last week.  As if overnight it now looks like a fully planted bed with spinach, lettuce and the first set of brassicas in there.   The second set of brassicas is in the bed behind it.  All of them are about the same size even though the last set was seeded almost two weeks later.    

The lettuce that was seeded in the earthbox in the mobile greenhouse sometime in February finally began growing.  A few weeks ago it looked like the hard freezes had just about done it in.  At this rate I’ll start picking some in a few days.