Nature and Gardening

What's a good way to create ambient warmth for overnight?

Not growing in my yard, fortunately, but I realized that the interesting looking shoots I had been seeing come up in the patch of woods on my way to work are actually japanese knotweed.

I know it's not going to kill the plant, but those shoots are pretty satisfying to kick over, they just go flying... between the knotweed and the garlic mustard I've got plenty of invasives to deal with if I ever feel like going on a plant murder rampage. I've already pulled up a 5 gallon bucket full of garlic mustard in my yard which I'm turning into a gardener's revenge liquid fertilizer.

Oh my! Unexpected frost is the last thing you want. I'm glad you're prepared though, seems like those plants are in good hands!

I just finished planting a bunch of melons and amaranth yesterday. This year, I'm intent on harvesting amaranth seeds and doing my best to make some edible bread out of the flour! We'll see how it goes. We don't have the biggest garden this year, but we have enough to keep us busy. Been fun, so far!

I love that you live in a town where people offer up cuttings rather than let it go to waste.

Our Aerogarden is doing an amazing job growing greens for our pet rabbit. I’ve been succession planting lettuce mix and just put some mint seeds in another open pod.

Hardly any of my green beans have sprouted. Some of the seeds are a few years old so looks like I need to order some new ones. My kid asked for a plant tepee she can play and read in. I need to see if we can find a sunny enough area for one.

The sunshine is finally out and the back and forth between false springs (there were like 4 this year) and so on the last one my partner laid some seeds for some herbs in our front yard. Mint and a couple other things, so we don't have to buy it mainly. The front section is our main focus at the moment.

Our back garden is wilding right now, we've been too busy and stressed to take care of it unfortunately. I really want to clean up all the extra pots and things that I don't think we have the space to use, and find something efficient to row and stack them to be functional. There's also issues with our area having agitated unhoused persons coming through and ruining our space, which can be quite demoralizing. They hit the front and the back and sometimes the neighbors, so my partner and I have had a hard time really mustering the energy to make it pristine, on top of the false springs previously mentioned.

In any case, I'm excited to make it nice in the back because we have a lovely "portable" fire pit and replacing the clutter with plants is always a breath of fresh air!

It's a busy spring for me! This is year two in a new home, and I've started converting larger chunks of boring grass into wildlife gardens and raised beds. So far this year I've put together:

• New herb garden - Thyme, oregeno, borage, chamomile, sage, you name it! Already Planted!

• A small cornfield - currently growing crimson clover and lettuce greens.

• A small squashfield more crimson clover! And getting the eventual companion beans going!

• A small wildlife garden - sunflowers, more clover, blue hubbard squash, and scarlet runner beans. Food for critters (and also trap crops to keep em off the human food!)

• A second raised bed (for square foot gardening) - Currently has little gem lettuce, red fire lettuce, oak fire mustard greens, carrots, turnips and moooooore~

• I also got a small plastic greenhouse this year, so now I have TEN MILLION tomato babies. Hooray! The peppers I'm growing are not quite ready for transplanting yet, but they'll get there.

My cherries all came through the cold nights with flying colors!