I had some trouble with last year’s garden. I was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy in 2023, which is a form of heart failure. I’m doing well with medication, but it does slow you down a lot. I noticed the most problem with bending and trying to weed or dig garden beds. I had a garden last year but it was not very well tended, because I just couldn’t, and so my harvest wasn’t as plentiful as it could have been. I had a few things that did well, especially if the soil was good (my cottage garden had some indigo and that did really well), but my main garden tends to get compacted a lot. For this year I got some new raised beds. They were just metal raised beds from Amazon. I ordered 6, set them up, and filled them with leaves, compost, and soil. I did a bit of a lasagna garden in them, just to keep my soil costs down a little. Here they are, set up:
My raised beds. Some had to be on pallets because the ground wasn’t very even.
The beds are waist-height, so they are just at the right level for me. I am so excited to garden in these this year. My husband told me I should order a couple more, so I did – those will be coming in the next week sometime. I planted seeds this week, so those should start coming up soon. I have some seedlings hardening off right now (tomatoes) but I just saw that we have a frost advisory for tonight so those will be coming inside tonight.
I put garlic in one of the beds for this summer, to try a spring-garlic trick that I read about. I had a really good harvest of garlic last fall, I think partially because they are a low-effort crop. I didn’t plant any in the fall though because I knew we’d be doing raised beds and didn’t want to take any space in the garden for them at the time. I read that you can plant it in the spring. Sometimes they won’t develop heads then, unless you cold stratify in the fridge. So I put some heads of garlic in the refrigerator sometime in March, and planted those in one of my raised beds the other day.
Besides the raised beds, we are doing a small Sunflower patch in the garden, and then raising potatoes in dog food bags:
Here are my potato bags. We put bamboo sticks up to prevent the dogs from messing with them or peeing on them when they come into our garden with us.
So far this year seems to be quite promising. Once we quit getting frost advisories anyway.
I started my early seeds last weekend – tomatoes, brocollini, some dye plants, and flowers. Some are things that the seed packet said to start in place, but last year when I started them in place I never saw them come up (like Woad). I wanted to make sure that I can find them. I also made sure to only plant a few seeds per tray, which will help me later because I won’t have to thin the seedlings.
I used old mushroom trays (from when you buy mushrooms at the store) with holes poked in for drainage, and set them inside actual seed starting trays. I have taller domes because my seedlings tend to be in the house for longer (because of our U.P. climate) and to keep plants safe from cats longer. One of my cats likes to dig into the pots if she just sees soil, so this will keep the seedlings safe. The domes have air vents, so that is helpful.
Here are my seed trays, with my grow lights (in the sunny window) – the sunny window does not give enough light, so they have grow lights. The Toilet paper tubes are cat-deterrents – to keep the cats from jumping up.
I didn’t have plant markers so I created a map of my seed trays:
Here is my seedling map. My tomatoes are the bottom right of the right tray. I then turned my actual trays so they are horizontal, but the larger trays in the trays are in the center.
I was able to fit 8 mushroom trays per seed-starting tray. Here you see the left tray (or most of the left tray:)
Here (at the bottom of the picture) you can see (from L to R) marigold, safflower, and brocollini. I have rocks between the brocollini types.
Some of the seedlings sprouted right away and some are taking a while, which is expected. It’s only been a week.
In this tray the dahlias are coming up before anyone else.
It’s always exciting during seed-starting time. Our weather is still really weird. Our winter never really showed up – we got a little snow over last weekend, right in time for St. Patrick’s day – a few inches of snow though. We’re still waiting to find out if our snowless winter will translate to an actual early spring. I’m going to follow our normal schedule, (most plants go out in late May/early June) just so I don’t get any unwelcome surprises.
Our spring was very cold for awhile, and then the last couple weeks it’s been super hot. It was 85 degrees yesterday and humid. Today it’s in the 40s. Tomorrow it is supposed to warm back up. It gets hard to plan your garden and planting when you’re not sure if the weather is going to cooperate. Here where we are situated, I follow a couple of different Last Frost dates – one for Houghton, Michigan, and one for Marquette (they are each about an hour or two away from me, I’m in the middle). According to my source, these two towns which are only a couple hours away from one another, are about 2 weeks different in terms of last frost date. One is mid May, one is late May. Then our weather can vary from day to day. It can be really hot and make you think “oh, I can plant those tomatoes” and then we get frost. Or even snow! I saw we might get some slight snow / rain showers in a couple days. But the temps shouldn’t be too cold where I’m that worried about us getting it. Anyway, I planted the last bits of my garden this weekend (before I saw that snow prediction). If I have to cover things, I will. I do have one or two things still waiting in the house – ginger, which can’t take ANY cold at all, and some gourds I’m waiting to sprout.
Here are some updated pictures of our gardens the last couple of weeks:
My cottage garden – we are putting in stones around all the paths. I will be sprinkling cayenne pepper if we get something digging up stones like we did last year. (We had something digging for grubs in the garden – a skunk or groundhog, probably.)
Here is the main Herb garden portion of the Cottage Garden. On the left I’m putting more perennial herbs, and the right is annuals.
Another view of the cottage garden.
My first Asparagus harvest! I just put the bed in last year so these were the first I have gotten.
Here is a view of the main garden. We are using landscape fabric this year to attempt to thwart weeds. It is pretty much all planted in this pic. On the left (from the back) are: tomatoes, then carrots, then sunflowers, leeks, cucumbers and zucchini. The right (from the back) are tomatoes, onions, sunflowers, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, greens/broccoli.
Here is a side view picture of the garden, only a few things were in in this picture (pic courtesy my husband Elton).
Our greenhouse before we put the outer plastic up for the year (photo taken by my husband Elton)
Here is inside the greenhouse. We got the plastic cover up yesterday and then I planted these all inside. On the left are peppers galore (bell and various hot peppers, and paprika) and the right are ground cherries, eggplant, and then a space in front for my ginger.
Here is our moon garden. We had planned it last year, and I got seeds pretty late – nothing had come up. So this year I started seeds inside and we planted them out last weekend. It’s still doing pretty well. It’s mostly white flowers (to reflect moonlight – the “moon garden”) but I put some black pansies in, and black hollyhocks too (although hollyhocks don’t flower their first year).
Here you can see the whimsical makeshift trellises we put in for our moon garden. I have white black-eyed susan vines to climb up these.
Here is my scarecrow / garden guardian. Her name is Valeria. I figured the garden could use the protection (to keep the grub-digger/stone-messer-uppers away). I made her body from a gourd I grew last year and other things from outside, to tie her to the land that she is protecting.
Here is Valerian (on the left) and my Stinging Nettles patch. These are in the back portion of my cottage garden. The Valerian flowers smell really good when they bloom.
The garden is growing and our spring is definitely under way. Hopefully the weather keeps cooperating.
Our yard. It’s green at the moment, but it keeps raining/snowing, and it’s not very warm out.
Our weather is still being finicky (not unusual for the Upper Peninsula, but it’s still disappointing). We had an early snow melt in March, with nice warm temps – it got us all excited for an early spring. We still are mostly snow-free, but out temps keep being kind of chilly. Too cold to really do much outside, I feel. We keep getting rain/snow mix precipitation too, so we have woken up to about an inch of snow here and there. I started to clean the garden up a bit yesterday, it was in the 50s, maybe into the 60s. But today it’s colder. We are supposed to get an inch of snow today. But the daffodils are blooming! My tulips are coming up. I planted a new variety of strawberries outside a few weeks back and they are growing now. And my garlic is all up, about 3 inches out of the soil.
I know it will get warmer (and stop raining and snowing all the time) and I’ll be able to do some stuff outside soon. But for now I am just taking comfort in my future garden – a lot of which I have already started in the house. I have tomatoes, peppers, ginger, and a lot of herbs and flowers started. They are all growing nicely.
Some of my seedlings. These are some various herbs, flowers and cabbage.The back of the photo shows some of my onion seedlings.
a side view of some of my tomatoes and other stuff
Here you can see the tomato plants are getting pretty big, and you can see marigolds on the left, and in front is lavender and basil.
More herbs and some peppers.
Here you can see my ginger sprouting (arrow points to one coming up)
I’ve been using old mushroom containers as grow containers for my seedlings. I used an awl and popped holes in the bottom of each container, and the mushroom containers are all on boot trays, so any extra water drains onto those. I have about 40+ mushroom trays of plants here. The last pic above is my ginger. I bought a pound of seed ginger from Fedco Seeds ( a company in Maine) this winter. It came in March and I’ve been working on sprouting them. I tried a couple years ago with about 3 roots, from a different company, and didn’t have as much success. This time the pound I bought came out to about 12 roots. All of the roots are starting to come up, or are just about to. I just had to be really sparing with watering, and super patient with them. The ginger is all planted just under the soil in an old plastic planting flat, and that is sitting on a heat mat. The directions Fedco sent said that consistent heat is needed, and to water sparingly until they come up. I give them a light spray once a day. They are prone to rotting until they come up above the soil if they get too much water. I will be putting these in my greenhouse once it’s warm enough outside and they are bigger.
Hopefully the weather will turn better here in the next week or so and I’ll be able to get back outside comfortably. Like I said, the daffodils are starting to bloom, so that is a good sign.
One of the first daffodils to bloom in 2021 (in my yard).
The garden is in full swing. I had it planted by mid may because we had several warm days in a row – the weather report called for a lot more to come, and mostly this has been true. We did get a frost warning on May 31st, so we had to hurry up and cover all our tomato plants, squashes, and a few other things. We didn’t actually get any frost, luckily. We’ve had a lot going on here, check out the pics below:
I planted a bunch of tulip bulbs in the fall, all along our front porch. They’ve been blooming nicely. Here on the right, we seem to have some color changing ones! They started yellow, as you see here.
Here they are yellow. Oh wait, there is an orange one next to them (but the same kind)
Here they are again.
A few days later they were all orange.
Then a day or so later, they turned red. Then the petals all fell off. I’m not sure what kind they are. I bought a mixture of tulips. I like that these ones changed color.
Here is a salamander that we found one day. These guys are so cool.
Here is the ONE morel that I found. I have not found any for a few years. I was out picking mint in a spot where I have mint growing, and I came across this. There were no others there. I’ll have to check that spot next year. It was colder than I thought it would need to be for Morels, so I need to remember that for next year.
I have my Nepenthes pitcher plant hung up in the greenhouse. Our greenhouse has been really helpful this year. I put this guy hanging from the ceiling. It gets lots of humidity and there are a bunch of bugs flying around in there. The bugs fly in and can’t seem to figure out how to get out of the greenhouse. But then they get drawn to the Nepenthes’ pitchers.
I have lemongrass growing this year. I replanted them into this box the other day, since they are getting big. I originally planted them in an old mushroom container. I have tried to grow lemongrass before but they like humidity, so they are going to stay in the greenhouse. I’ve never actually had them get this far before, probably due to lack of heat/humidity.
Here are some of my greenhouse plants. I mostly have things that are waiting to go in the regular garden – a few herbs and flowers that will be put in the cottage garden. I also have some tomato seedlings. (I was trying to start more because we had some issues with tomatoes this year – more on that below).
Here are more greenhouse plants. I have peppers in the front. I may leave them in the greenhouse. I also have extra tomato plants in here.
Here is the ginger I’m growing this year. I started some last year, it really didn’t do a lot – due to lack of heat, I believe. From what I planted I got two little nubs of ginger, which I left in the soil and kept in a mini-greenhouse in my house all winter. This spring they started sprouting. So they are now in the regular greenhouse. Hopefully I’ll get to eat some fresh ginger this year.
Here are some tomatoes. I had some issues with my tomato seedlings this year. I started with 10 varieties, and a few did great, but 7 kinds stunted for some reason (after research I think I overwatered and they were suffering from nutrient deficiencies due to that). I put some of the stunted seedlings in the garden, some in the greenhouse. Some of the garden ones did ok and recovered, but some didn’t. I ended up buying a few heirloom plants from a local greenhouse to make up for the lost time of my stunted plants. Here you can see the purchased plant at the back, and one of my stunted (but recovering) seedlings. I hope we get lots of tomatoes.
Here is a butterfly that we saw in the yard.
I planted some Comfrey several years ago, and they are going strong and spreading a little here. The bees love them and they are pretty, even though their flowers are small.
Here you can see some hollyhock plants. This part of the yard is kind of a bee garden – there are hollyhocks, peonies, comfrey, goldenrod (I just leave for the bees) and some mugwort.
I bought a foxglove plant, and the flowers are coming in. The flower stalk is getting too heavy, I guess, since it had fallen over. I picked it up to get this photo.
Here are the garlic and shallots that I planted in fall. They are all growing in well. I have 4 kinds of garlic, and 2 kinds of shallots here.
The Cottage Garden. (My new name for the old chicken yard). It’s a bit of a mess – we are still cleaning stuff up, and the things I’ve planted are still tiny. But it’s coming together.
Here is my herb and flower spiral. I lined it with rocks, it’s actually a labyrinth path (so you can walk it to the center). I’m slowly adding rocks and plants. I have a lot of things waiting to go in – they are getting bigger in the greenhouse. I have found that transplanting tiny seedlings is too much trouble, so I’ll wait till they are bigger. Next year if I need to, I will direct seed instead of transplanting herbs and things.
Here is another view of the Cottage Garden.
Here is a picture of my cauliflower, these are growing well. I made a cabbage-moth spray with garlic and citrus that I have been spraying on all the brassicas to keep cabbage moths off. So far it’s been mostly successful.
My beans are finally coming up – these are in the cottage garden as well.
Here is a sign that my dear friend Ellen got me a few years ago. She passed away this February. I’m glad I finally have somewhere to put it. It has different sayings so you can change what it says – there’s another one “Lettuce Turnip the Beet” and some other silly ones.
The garden is doing well, I can’t wait to see it all grow in.
We have had a strange spring, it’s finally warming up again. Our weather was warming when I last posted, and then we got more snow over the Easter weekend – about a foot. That melted after a week or so, so we are finally getting into actual spring here. I planted some tulips in the fall and those are emerging now, and our daffodils are getting ready to bloom soon. We’ve been adding some stuff to the yard, planning the garden, and we put up a greenhouse yesterday! Here are some pictures of our farm in early May:
The main garden is getting ready for planting, although we have a while before our last frost date. We put in newspaper and cardboard covered with old chicken bedding as mulch, to try to keep weeds down this year. Next I’ll be turning the actual beds for planting.
Here are the onions, I am starting to harden them off so I can put them in the garden soon. This picture was just before I took them out to the porch to harden off.
Some seedlings – these are mostly cauliflower I think.
More seedlings. I am growing 10 types of tomatoes this year!
Here are the asparagus. I’m growing two kinds, and planning out their permanent bed – we’ll be putting that in soon.
I planted some Honeyberries, or Haskap. They are a cold-hardy oblong blue berry, that is supposed to taste something like a cross between strawberry and raspberry.
Here is another Haskap. I put in 4 bushes. I got these from Honeyberry USA, out of Northern Minnesota.
Here is our Gooseberry bush, I got it a few years ago, but planted it next to the house. It really didn’t thrive there, because it was always crowded by weeds and wildflowers, but it lived. So I just transplanted it into our front yard so it will hopefully do better there. We do tend to get gooseberries from it, but only like 4 or 5 per year so far. Maybe it will get more this year since it has more room. I also fenced it against deer in case they decide that it looks tasty.
Here is one of the elderberries – I just put in two trees in our front yard, and circled them both with fencing to keep the deer from eating them. I have attempted to plant them before but had deer destroy them. This time they are protected.
We got some Emerald Green Arborvitae to make a privacy hedge in our front yard – here they are – they are all just under a foot tall right now – they should grow 12-15 feet tall and 3-4 feet wide, so they’ll make a nice hedge.
Here is another view of the arborvitae. We put in 10 in a little haphazard row to make the hedge. We fenced this also, to keep the deer from wrecking them. Luckily this part of the yard doesn’t grow grass very quickly so it won’t really need mowing while they grow in.
Here is our greenhouse! My uncle gave it to me in the fall. He had had it sitting in his garage (had been given it by our other uncle) and neither uncle wanted to use it anymore so they gave it to us. We put it up yesterday, and then extended our dog fence around it (so it will be easier to access from the backyard where the garden is). It’s approximately 10×10 feet. It’s pretty nice, we are happy with how it went up.
My cat, Wizard was investigating the greenhouse and decided to pose for some pictures.
Here is another picture of Wizard. He is excited to be able to explore outside without dealing with snow. We are all happy it is spring.
Spring is finally here – it comes a little late to us here in the U.P. I am on a lot of garden groups online and have seen all sorts of people showing their gardens already, and we are just seeing the snow melting now. I’ve been a bit jealous this spring but my turn will come soon, since it’s warming up now.
We made the difficult decision this spring to get rid of our poultry – the costs for feeding them all were getting too hard for us, so we sold them to our neighbors, who were happy to get already-laying hens and ducks. I do miss them but it’s for the best. I will be using their old chicken yard for gardens for greens and herbs, and there are spots I can un-fence now – the deer don’t bother these areas but the chickens always liked to dust bathe in a few spots and would decimate plants, if there was no fence. I can take those fences out now.
I went around today and took some pictures of our yard, here is how the snow melt is going:
Here is the old chicken yard. I have a plan to take this whole space over with plants this year.
Here is an existing garden – the snow is right over where I planted garlic and shallots in the fall.
While taking pics, I heard meowing from the old chicken house. My cat, Wizard was inside, up in the rafters, chasing mice. He didn’t go in when the chickens were here, but he’s been spending a lot of time in there now.
Here is a back garden space, we are thinking of adding a porch where the big doors are. We’ll see if that happens this year.
Here you can see my strawberry plants are waking up.
Our yard. We still have a lot of snow, especially where there were banks around the house. I am glad to see it melting.
Our crocuses are up! Here are some purple ones.
Yellow crocus.
Here you can see a bearded iris – I found them on sale in the fall and got a dozen – they are planted around our oak tree in the front – they all seem to be coming up.
Here are our spruce trees in the front. The little one looks like it still needs to recover from being completely buried by snow all winter. The largest one is about 4 feet, and that one was peeking out of the snow, but we had times where the other two were completely buried.
I started onions in February – they are doing well. I am planning on starting tomatoes and stuff today so they are nice and big for transplanting into the garden in June.
Here are some poppies, I started these in February as well. I have tried to start them in May before and they are always really small when I’ve transplanted, and they don’t seem to survive. So I thought I would try to have them larger for transplant. If this year doesn’t work I’ll throw seeds in directly in the fall so they come up next year.
We’ve been really busy here lately. It has been mostly a colder spring with night temps in the 40s- we had our heat still going at times until last week, and we even had a frost advisory for June 1st; but then this weekend we got a warmup – we were at 90 degrees yesterday!
The garden is mostly planted; I have a few things that are waiting to go in, but I am mostly just working on maintenance and weeding now. Seeds have been slow to start because we are really dry this year as well. That is somewhat of a nice change over the last few years but I have to make sure to water everything often, and I have seeds that I haven’t seen sprout yet, like my broccoli and some of my beans (I’m growing 6 kinds of beans this year – some are up but some have not sprouted, and some have not been planted yet).
Here are some pictures of the goings-on at our tiny farm:
Our apple trees are in blossom.
Here is a big bee visiting the apple blossoms.
A lone tulip. This came up randomly in the middle of our yard. I haven’t seen any tulips here in years, although my mom used to have a lot of them. I replanted it in a safer spot.
Here is the main garden. It is mostly in – I’m waiting for the corn to emerge and then I’ll put some more beans in to grow up the corn.
Here are the two tomato beds, with some marigolds planted among them. I have 18 tomato plants this year, 7 different kinds.
Here you can see my Crosnes are coming up – they look a bit like mint; I had to look them up online to verify what the plants look like, but there are 5 or 6 of them that have emerged.
Here are some sunchokes coming up as well.
Here is the back / chicken garden (I stole it from the chickens last year). It gets less sun so I planted things that can take a lot of shade toward the back, like lettuce and herbs.
Here is my back of the house garden. I put some watermelon, cantaloupe, and summer squash in here. This bed gets a lot of sun, and is sandier soil – supposed to be really good for melons, so I figured I would try them here this year. The bags have potatoes. At the far end of the garden is my strawberry/mint patch.
Here is a close up of the strawberry patch. You can see the mint intermixed. I use mint a lot, and the strawberries are getting lots of flowers. Hopefully I’ll get a lot of berries this year.
The chicks are growing up! I put them in with the adults a couple weeks ago, so they could see each other but were separated; they are now mixed with the adults and everyone seems to be getting along well.
Here is Nova enjoying the sunshine and some petting.
Here is Atat out in the sunshine. I’m not sure where Downey (our other dog) was when we were taking pictures, but he has been enjoying the sunshine too.
This summer is shaping up to be a nice one so far.
Our spring finally seems to be in full swing – we kept getting unseasonably cold weather for a bit – they were calling for 6 inches of snow last week but we didn’t get any, luckily. The temperatures are starting to warm enough that I put in a bunch of the garden this past weekend (the stuff that can tolerate frost, anyway). I heard the frogs chirping the last few evenings – it’s finally been warm enough for them.
The chicks are growing up really fast. I gave them a larger box from their original brooder box. I think I have mostly females but there are at least a couple of roosters in there – someone has been attempting to crow, but it’s not very developed yet. Below are some new pictures of the chicks and the rest of the farm:
Here are the chicks today – they are just over 2 weeks old now.
Here is one of the penguin-looking chicks. I’m hoping it’s a girl but with that comb it doesn’t look promising. I do have some adult hens with large combs, so we’ll have to wait to find out.
Here is one of the gray chicks.
A couple of brown/red chicks. They were not happy that I had moved them, they were ducking down a little scared.
Here is one of the blonde chicks.
Here are two of our blonde chicks – the one with the orange head is on the left, the one with the cat-eye-eyeliner is on the right. (From individual pics in the last post)
Here is another pic – you can see the wing feather coloration change on the right. It’s cool when their feathers come in – chicks’ coloring can completely change as they grow.
We are growing potatoes in feed bags again this year – we have 20 bags planted – I put in about 11.5 pounds of potatoes, three different types. We had really good luck last year growing them in bags. They are in the garden fence to keep them from the chickens.
Here is our Strawberry patch. It is also a mint patch (they are both taking over this area). Hopefully they can grow together and keep the other weeds out but let each other grow. There may be a fight. Even though I love mint, I would still let the strawberries win.
Here is my back garden that I took from the chicken coop – last year we grew squash and tomatoes here but it doesn’t get enough sun later in the season. I am putting a lot of shade tolerant things in here, lettuce, peas, and other things. I planted everything yesterday that can go in already. Peas, spinach, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, lettuce, chard, kale, and brocollini. I have some other stuff started inside, and I will direct sow beans in June.
Here are my onions! I have a full bed of yellow and a half bed of red that I planted this past weekend. The red onions will be sharing a bed with radishes for this month and then peanuts in the summer. The radishes should be ready before I put the peanuts in.
Here you can see the garlic starting to come up through the straw – this was planted in October.
Here is my garden as of today. There are only a couple of beds ready – this is the double-dug French Intensive garden. I have 12 beds in here, but the weeds are trying to take over. Most of this garden will go in next month, so I have some time to get the beds weeded and ready.
Our daffodils are finally blooming!
Here are some purple flowers we have growing in our yard. I’m not sure what these are called.
Today was a beautiful day. We had temps in at least the 50s, and it was sunny. The snow is melting, and I planted a new bed full of perennial vegetables. Here are some pictures from this nice spring day:
Here you can see our yard is on it’s way to being snow-free. It’s taking awhile. This picture is taken from outside of our dog fence, near the garage. On the left you can kind of see my garden, which is still half covered. The garlic bed started to peak out of the snow today, and that was the deepest part of the snow in the actual garden.
Here is the house with some snow around it – we have a metal roof so the snow falls around the house and those snowbanks always take longer to melt.
Here is our chicken-coop path currently. It’s a low, muddy mess. Luckily we have muck boots to wear when we go to the chicken coop. The ducks love this area – they dabble their bills in the puddles when they pass though. (When the snow is all melted and the ground dries out, the “path” actually disappears, but it’s been a pathway for the last several months).
Here is a new bed I’m creating near the garage for some perennial flowers and vegetables – I originally planned for just sunchokes and crosnes in this area but I think I will put some milkweeds and gogi berries as well since there is enough room. This is a good spot in case the sunchokes go a little invasive, as I’ve heard they can. This area is out of the way, just grassy, and it could use some nice flowers – sunchokes are supposed to have yellow flowers and be nice and tall. I set this up last weekend, and I thought I would have a week or so for the plastic to kill the grass, but I did not; the sunchokes and crosnes arrived sooner than I thought they would.
Here are the sunchokes – they arrived the other day. I got two kinds, a red (on the left) and white fuseau, on the right. I got three tubers of each kind.
Here are Crosnes (aka Chinese Artichokes). These are pretty small but they are supposed to be delicious, and a very easy to grow perennial. I read that you should cut the plants before they flower in order to get tubers of decent size though, so I plan on doing that. I ordered 6 tubers – I think I actually received 8 but some were very small.
Here is the sunchoke and crosnes portion of the bed planted. I left the rest of the bed with the plastic on it so it can continue to cook in the sun for awhile. I laid fencing over the bed to keep chickens out – it’s very sandy and they would love to make this into a dust bath area. I will fence it soon and then will be able to take this cover off.
I went wandering the woods and yard a bit today – I found some moss that had greened up already – here is a bug’s eye view of the moss.
We have crocuses blooming! Here are some white flowers.
Here are some purple crocus. We have daffodil leaves emerging too.
My tiny u.p. farm 