“A Love for Gardening”

Hello everyone, this is Elbie reporting from Scott County. It’s been a very unusual winter here. In fact, it doesn’t even seem much like winter at all, just a very long fall with a few cold snaps. I was even excited to see a scattering of snow this morning, even though it’s March. Fortunately, the temperatures hovered in the 30s-last night, instead of dropping in the low 20s as forecasted. With so many plant buds breaking already, we really can’t afford very low temperatures.
Since it’s the first of March, it’s definitely time to start those tomato and pepper seeds, if you haven’t already. It’s also time to clean up all the garden beds and get them ready to plant. The seed potatoes, onion sets, and English and sugar snap pea seeds should be planted very soon. If you want to grow your own sweet potatoes slips, it’s time to start sprouting your sweet potatoes in water. This warm weather will make us want to get plants in the ground early, but it will be risky.
My garden and yard is definitely showing signs that spring is here. The shiitake logs have benefited from all the recent rains and warm weather. I’ve picked over a gallon of mushrooms in the past week.

New leaves have emerged on the rhubarb and soon I’ll need to cut off the flower buds so that the rhubarb doesn’t spend energy producing those inedible flowers.

My sour cherry tree is in full bloom too, so I’m truly hoping we won’t get another hard freeze.

It will be interesting to see how this spring plays out! My husband moved a snake out of the road on February 28th so it wouldn’t get run over. That’s the earliest we’ve ever seen a snake out of hibernation around here. I hope we had enough cold weather to keep most of our insect and disease problems from overwintering in our yards, but I’m a little concerned. I’m itching to get back outside and get my garden back in order. Gardening is definitely my therapy. It’s time to put our gardening gloves on and get back to the work we love!