Whew! I’ve been busy! Spring is a very busy time here at the homestead as I try to juggle mediumship, YouTube, and my gardens. As you can see from the picture above, most of my raised beds are already spoken for. It doesn’t look like much now, as the plants are still small, but in about a month it will be packed with growth. Today I plan to start my peppers in a cold frame outside.
If you haven’t checked out your April Tarotscope yet, click here! 🙂
It is time to get those potatoes in the ground! You’ll see that I do potatoes a little bit differently. I dig trenches 6″ deep, drop the potatoes in, and then backfill with straw only. Potatoes do just fine growing in only straw. That straw will slowly turn into compost and then next year this will be my most fertile planting bed. I do this mainly because I have heavy clay soil, but the straw also makes it easier to find the potatoes when it’s time to harvest.
I’m also trying my hand at growing artichokes for the first time! They’re small right now as you can see, but these will turn into giant plants as the season goes on.
This is the second season for the asparagus and I have shoots starting to come up. I’m really looking forward to harvesting next year! Next year should be a very exciting year for the garden as many perennials will finally be coming into maturity.
When I went to plant the potatoes, I was amazed at all of the earthworms I found. This is the beginning of my third season here, and year 1 I did not see a single earthworm as the soil was so bad. But it seems that two years of amending soil has paid off, and now I feel confident in transitioning the garden over to a no-till system. My philosophy for gardening is to simply “get out of the way” and let nature do the hard work for me. Simply put: if I don’t have to till, I’m not going to.
And lastly, I picked up this book and set of bedtime affirmation cards (oracle cards?) on a whim at a local shop and it has turned into the nicest bedtime routine! I highly recommend doing something nice for yourself before bed. It sets a good foundation for the following day.