April's Garden (2026)

This month has been spent getting the garden rows created. The soil has been raked up to form raised beds going east to west and then grass has been placed on the walkways. It has been backbreaking work; but hopefully, it will be an improvement.

The last bit of edible spinach is being harvested and the rest allowed to go to seed for fall planting. Saving spinach seeds is something I haven't gotten the hang of.  In the past, I always forgot them until it was too late. The spring spinach is now ready and it is the first time I have ever been able to overlap the harvests. A successful first!

Some of the Unzen Early Flat winter onions that were in areas needing to be plowed were transplanted to empty spots in this bed; surprisingly, they lived even though they are maturing late. I guess that ruined their earliness. 

This front (south) area will be plowed and planted eventually. We haven't decided how to arrange the rows or what we want to do. The new strawberry bed is doing great except that the birds and squirrels have found them. A net will be covering them from now on.

They must be harvested daily which is a labor of love. We finally have more than you can eat while picking so a few have made it to the freezer.

The middle section of the back (north) garden has seeds that mostly haven't sprouted yet. They are in the ground just waiting for the right moment to pop out.

As each row is planted the edges are raised to form a dam so the water will not run off.  After the plants are established a mulch will be added. We are expecting a drought this year...as always, so some new things are being tried. The onions will stand up straight after their roots are stronger.

Everything that needed to be planted early was placed against the perimeter fence.  

This bed is stuffed full. Snow peas are running up the back, onions will shade the spinach plants, and in the tiny space on the right beside the post will soon hold one pole Lima bean. It should vine up the fence and trail along the top. It looks crowded but one sizeable salad harvest will thin it out quite well. The snow pea leaves are also delicious in green salads.

The potatoes are thriving in the back corner. We planted more this year because canning fries in the air fryer has become a favorite winter dish.

These are the onions behind the potatoes that were planted last fall. Nothing could be moved and it threw off the new spacing of the beds. Spinach was squeezed in the thin space against the back fence. The tree leaves haven't completely come out yet so there is still plenty of sun. Hopefully the onions will be almost finished when it becomes shady and the spinach should appreciate the shadows.

Lettuce was tossed into the back corner because there was nowhere else available at the time.

The rest of the garden is sitting on the front porch waiting to be planted. 

Historically this season is known as the "starving time" when the past year's food has been consumed but the new garden isn't producing yet. My pantry inventory revealed we have eaten much of our food, way more than ever before. The shelves are bare enough to make me nervous. It has been a combination of learning new recipes and focusing on rotating the stock to avoid any waste that has emptied it out. We have improved our eating habits by relying less on the supermarket and more on the garden. However, it has shifted more work and responsibility to us and it has changed from a hobby to a necessity. I think my next hobby will be something easier like sitting on a couch deciding which movie to watch.

Last Month's March Garden (2026)

Last Year's April Garden (2025)

March's Garden (2026)

This month's garden tour begins in the yard. Notice the mowed path in the tall grass and the missing trailer. The zero turn mower broke, followed by the death of the push mower as Bill was trying to cut this path to the garden. These breakdowns followed the dishwasher croaking right after we replaced the entire heating/air unit. The manure trailer is gone never to return because the two special sized tires which are needed to replace the flats cost more than the trailer is worth. The tiller is limping and in need of repair but at least for now, it is working.

We are tilling the whole garden this year and changing the directions of the rows from north/south to east/west. We have wondered if the different sun angle would improve the crops. Wide center aisles will be added to accommodate a man sized wheelbarrow (which is fine with me as long as a man is pushing it). The goal is to standardize the row sizes to make the hoop houses interchangeable. We are working ourselves to death trying to make life easier.

There will be a row along the edge of the fence going around the whole garden for tall things that need support. It is piled high with dirt at the base to dissuade anything from digging underneath. The aisles will be filled with raked leaves, pulled weeds, and hopefully, eventually grass clippings (when the mowers are repaired). Everything decomposed from past aisles is now mixed into the new planting beds and should make them better. We are hoping for a spectacular garden this year since some areas will be like new again.

The new design isn't exact due to winter crops that are still growing. There is a walk path between the winter onions and the fence. It will be planted with vegetables but it throws the spacing off for this the whole section. After the onions are harvested it might be rearranged now or sometime later. This is definitely a work in progress.

The beds must be raised because the garden is located on the side of a long sloping hill. The first year the garden was planted a hard rain washed everything away. A massive amount of stormwater runs through the garden forming streams. As long as the beds stay raised they are safe. The paths are the same level as the soil in the yard which has made us realize how much organic matter has been added over twenty-two years of gardening.

The upper half of the garden has been tilled once just to knock down the weeds. It has the newly built strawberry bed on the left which is beside the winter spinach in the middle and the fence corner holds the last of the now precious manure. All of this will be dealt with later.

What will absolutely, positively not be planted this year will be wax melons. Nine melons were produced on two plants last year and they either dropped unripe off the vine or rotted. This was the last one stored in the basement and it also molded. It was dumped with a vengeance in the compost pile where it can mold and rot all it wants.

A big success was achieved by my son Dustin. He has never grown anything so since his apartment has a balcony, last year I sent (forced) him to take a potted tomato. The balcony was too shady so the tomato languished. He couldn't bare to let the spindly vine freeze come winter so he brought it inside, balanced a grow light on buckets and boxes in the middle of his living room, and the grateful tomato thrived.  

Last week he sent it home to me and Bill has been dragging the heavy pot out on the sunny porch on warm days.

It even came with tomatoes.

I, the greedy gardener that I am, immediately began snipping the suckers and rooting them. They will be put in the garden as soon as it is warm. The original tomato will be planted after it has been trimmed back so it can recover from transplant shock. 

This is going to be the best garden year EVER! I'm the first person in my neighborhood to have ripe tomatoes in March! I'm so going to brag.

Last Month's February Garden (2026) 

Last Year's March Garden (2025)

February's Garden (2026)

Winter is almost finished. Most of of the green color is from weeds. I did reach some of the goals set after last year's winter garden 2025's failures. 

Red Merlot is the most winter hardy lettuce I have ever grown. Learning from last year's mistake that it is necessary to fertilize during the winter made this lettuce stand out brightly among the weeds. (Weeding wasn't one of my goals.)

The onion bulbs that were purchased last spring, stored in the vegetable tray of the refrigerator then planted last fall are waking up. No others were started from seed in the fall because the spring harvest was so large, none were needed. These will get me through until the spring crop is ready. A few new varieties have just been started this week and if they do well, they will be planted again in the fall. Growing onions in the winter is easier. Eventually I will get it right.

 A goal not met was finding a good broccoli variety. Winter storm Fern killed them. The carrots were a success but were dug early to avoid possibly losing them in the blizzard. Last year's biggest goal was to plant enough Bloomsdale spinach to make us happy. That, I accomplished and I'm glad I did. We have plenty of our favorite green!  

Every year I make a new mistake from which to learn. This year getting the seedlings out too late killed most of them when Fern arrived. Everything was behind schedule because we were waiting on the second planting of green beans to mature. They were delayed because a fat rabbit ate the spring crop one night. The very late planted spinach did just fine. It is enough to make your head explode trying to guess the weather. The once in a lifetime ice storms seem to be happening regularly. 

This year's winter goals will be to plant earlier, try onions from seed again, look for another variety of broccoli, and repeat my success with spinach. Perhaps not making mistakes would be the best goal but I wouldn't learn anything then!

Last Month's January Garden (2026)

February's Garden (2025) and Goals for 2026

January's Garden (2026)

It has been a challenging month. We managed to rest for a few days, as I said we would, and then the long-term weather reports began flashing red warning signs. The once in a lifetime, winter storm Fern was on the horizon and barreling toward us. No rest for the weary, preparations began in haste.  The temperatures would drop at night to the single digits for at least a week, probably two so the sugar beats and carrots would freeze. As the storm was blowing in, we harvested what we could.

Most of them have already been pulled but I didn't want to waste what few were left. Both the greens and the roots were used. 

There were more than I had expected. It's hard to judge until you pull them up.

The carrot row has been harvested from both ends so was getting short. It's less work to lift one spot of the hoop house and pull up all you need than to open all of it. 

I tried different varieties again this year but couldn't tell enough difference between the expensive hybrids and the bulk seeds from the feed store to justify the prices. The cheap seeds are not as uniform but so what  - they taste just as good. They would have grown larger if they could have been left in the ground longer but I didn't want to lose everything. 

Then Fern arrived. She was a major artic blast that effected over 230 million Americans from the Ohio Valley to the Southern Plains and up the East Coast. We were sitting on the dividing line between two fronts. Freezing ice broke the power poles, knocked down the lines, felled trees and made travel impossible.  At its peak on Sunday, over one million people were without power. Snow would have been easier, at least the infrastructure could have held better.

Our power stayed on so we were able to house others. The summer garden that filled my pantry to overflowing has been a lifesaver.  All of the hot garden work, standing for hours in the kitchen chopping, canning, freezing, and dehydrating food has paid off.

The storm delivered us a mountain of new firewood just waiting to be cut and hauled. It will be fed to the old wood burning stove in the basement to keep us warm and the pipes from freezing during the next storm. She ain't pretty but she sure is hot.  

I haven't left the house for a week except to throw bird seed out on the back deck. Our guests have all left so we are going out today to see if our car will get up the driveway. Neighbors said the main roads are clear if we can get past our backroad. There is something I must buy from somewhere before I go crazy. I feel a case of cabin fever coming on and spending money is the only cure. 

Last Month's December Garden (2026)

Last Year's January Garden (2025)