Spring Planting Is in Full Swing!

Picture of my Zinnia transplants grown from seed, in the greenhouse ready for the next stage - planting out! Finally it's that time. Shifting gears from starting seedlings mode - to crouching down to get the plants in the ground mode.

I forgot planting season = please pass the tylenol season.. But the pain is surpassed by the excitement of the many more varieties going in this year.

A clean slate:

I title this pic - Farmer - Self Portrait. (ha!)

We did wait a good 2 weeks after the last frost date to plant, and after a major wind storm blew by us, we finally felt safe to shift gears to installing the babies.

Special rush delivery from the mail man. You know how excited some ladies get about their shoe collection? - I have the same fetish about seeds!

Last years irrigation lines have been re-installed and Dumplin charging full speed ahead with the seeder. Boat-load of new varieties to test this season. probably alittle too many. Bachelor Buttons, tons of different type of bouquet fillers, Sunflowers galore, and of course zinnias. Mr. Kitty - Ready to get his farm on !

One of my favorite plants in the whole wide world is Buddelia aka Butterfly Bush. While they do look a little on the scrubby side when they get big, but boy are they the #1 butterfly magnet ever. Its not uncommon to see 10 different varieties of Butterflies just cover one big bush in bloom.

I've got 150 of these baby bushes to plant! The cuttings only took a month to grow fabulous root system. So impressed.

They will be the driving force behind getting more butterflies in the gardens this year and give height and spike-type flowers to our bouquets. They do have a sweet flora fragrance as well. A new Coreopsis experimenting with this season. From the "Incredible!" series. Healthy babies but Notice the lack of soil blocks :( Compared to last year. kicking myself. Cosmos - 3 varieties ready to go in the ground. I did make a terrible mistake this year. I had started out my normal soil blocking methods, but having to start 4 times as many plants this year, I quickly ran out of enough trays early on - My Bad! - I couldn't find the trays I wanted in bulk so I folded under the time crunch pressure rush of spring and decided to use the traditional plastic pots to save myself time (oh, so I thought!). Boy will I never do that again!

With the soil blocks I could hang off the back of the tractor and plop the blocks in very quickly as chris drove the tractor down each row as he would make each planting hole. With the plastic pots this time. I could NOT do that. Rows were made first, then I had to carefully remove each plant from individual cells, or plug trays - before plopping them in. All this while crouching down these never ending rows, to fill the thousands of holes. What it took to do in a few minutes last year - took daaaaays this year...And my back and hips- oy - I feel like a 95-year old lady to boot. hahaha - Lesson learned. No more shortcuts for me. Soil blocks are the bomb y'all!! Plastic pots have their place for starting cuttings or selling plants, but not for the labor intensive work of transplanting seedlings. Soo not worth it. good that I learned this now at least.

Well gardening and farming is all about this learning and sharing process - so we did alot of that at the annual Seed Swap hosted here on the farm. Here are some pictures from the great event.

Couldn't believe the enthusiasm and willingness to share everyone brought with them. Seed Swap was a total success. Had people bringing accordian files full of seeds to swap, pictures and scrap books to show off their gardens to others, and lots of seedlings, everything from heirloom purple tomatoes to - hairy balls?! lol. yes that is the name of a plant, and after a few beers, it made me laugh too. that's gardener humor for ya.

Met so many cool gardeners. Everyone had their speciality - from tomato aficionado, to collector of all varieties of butterfly host plants.

We brought the egg-mobile up to the stand to visit and the kids did get to enjoy hanging out on the farm.

I got alot of ideas if we are to host one again. One of the guests was fellow blogger Erin and her family. She is a Virginia Beach Master Gardener and has a kick butt back yard. She does a great blog about gardening, cooking, living in small spaces and to my amazement knitting and quilting too. Gotta love how she incorporates her two boys into gardening. I'm sure I will torture my children equally with blogging once that day comes! Oh yeah.

Check out her blog "Garden Now - Think Later!" (april's/easter 2011 post) and get a view of the farm from her kids prospective: http://www.gardennow-thinklater.blogspot.com/

Leaving you with the view out my back window. First day of May and the Butterfly garden is in full bloom with view of the coop. With more bugs around, its entertaining to watch the girls perfecting their stealthy bug catching antics. One of the hens will find a bug, squawk, and take off running - then all the others assume she wants to share her bounty and start chasing her around. Imagine the chickens version of duck-duck- goose.

Ah, spring time at the farm - It is a good place to be a chicken- Next week our batch of 30 chicks arrive!! Yippy!