Spring Showers Bring May Flowers

Spring showers have brought in the wind and rainstorms that blow the white bits of flowers off the Bradford Pear trees. Puddles of petals everywhere. They cover the property and collect in the ever growing pools of water around the farm.This shot sums up my morning trip out to the greenhouse to water seedlings. Drainage. One of the challenges of farming in Pungo. Maybe I should be growing water lilies!? Well the good news is, frogs certainly don't mind this ponding. The symphony of croaking night life echoes through the woods and has been amplifying in volume every night. Tadpoles on the way... bring on the future bug catchers! Weekends are turning into one big blur of planting. I regret not getting more sweet peas in during the fall. Couldn't resist starting extras though. The ones sprouting up look so healthy wish I had a thousand more! All this seed starting has made me realize I need to get on the perennial bandwagon, before I wear out. Thankful I had planted some last spring that are coming back and will return a little better every year, without any input of labor from me! This trend will continue -Lavender plants are starting to leaf out. Heavenly scent. My goal this year is to grow more flowers with fragrance, an attribute usually lacking from most commercially grown bouquets. Mints, lavenders, sweetpeas, rosemary, and as many varieties of basil as I can find (from lemon - to cinnamon). - and edible to boot!

If you reap what you sow, hope there is alot of fun in store for us this summer!

Wouldn't be a blog post without a picture of Dumpling. He is busy dreaming up the next project on the horizon - a new sign.

Silly me :) I just assumed we would use the existing sign and repaint. Then I find random napkin drawings around the house of the new designs he's got constructed in his head already. "Gotta match the building babe!"

Excited that we are hosting a seed/seedling swap here at the farm - April 23rd, 5pm.

This weekend got my hands dirty - Starting seedlings for the stand. Alot of heirloom varieties this year.

Sticking with the technique we used last year - organic soil amendments with old fashioned - soil block method. Only last year I used tiny soil blocks, and this year, will stick to the larger blocks. They give me more wiggle room on the planting date since they have more room to grow.

Have the standard 3-pack seedling trays for the stand.

My little system - once the seeds "hatch"/germinate - under the grow lights and heat mats, they go out to the greenhouse to grow for a few more weeks. My goal is to maintain a steady flow from shelves to greenhouse.

Outside, dumplin was on his own to do list. Well-aged horse manure was delivered to the stand last week and Chris got a chance to till it into the soil before more spring showers started!

He wouldn't admit to it but think he was having alot of fun with this project.
All tilled up and pretty before the plastic rows go in.

Preparing For Spring!

Busy getting all the seeds ordered/organized and ready to go. I did manage to save some seeds from our garden last year and am excited to see how they do. Also read a great tip from a fellow blogger about making labels recycled from mini-blinds and created a bunch of those for next to nothing. (my wooden ones from last year did not last long and the writing faded much too quickly!)
Spent a day getting greenhouse prepared for the spring as well by just cleaning house and ready for the season.

Was so thankful for the greenhouse last spring - to really get off to a great start since we started 95% of all our flowers and veggies from seed.

Used another part of a weekend to get all the plastic mulch up from last year. Wasnt hard at all. Was surprised it only took me about 2-3 hours to pull it all up. Here is a shot of dumpling walking the isles and checking to make sure I didn't leave any little pieces behind. I posted an ad on craigslist on a Friday night asking for someone to deliver horse poop to our flower farm. Couldnt believe the reponse we got and one of which was a guy who lives a few houses over from us on our road. Saturday morning he was at our stand delivering 2 dumpsters full of composted horse manure and wood shavings on our front acre. The woodchip and manure mixture had been composting for the last 4 years so its good as gold...Not to mention he had a dump-bed so our backs and entire weekend were saved from having so scoop it in the wheelbarrow! phew - its the little things sometimes that can make a huge difference in quality of your weekend when you are a farmer. LOL! Well as you can tell by the post, it is finally warming up here to go outside and get our hands in the dirt. Here is a Cute pic dumpling made me in the dead of winter while he was away on deployment. It was created on his computer because he wanted to get a glimpse of what the stand will look like this summer! We are getting there!