March 2009: Turning the corner.

We prettified this one sliver of our yard with some amaryllis and iris bulbs extricated from Jenny's childhood home (that's still inhabited by her parents -- this wasn't horticultural theft):
Here is the early spring garden from head on, there are several plants from the righthand bed that overwintered from the fall garden because we had a very mild winter and it never got cold enought to kill them. On the contrary, many of the "fall" plants thrived during the cool winter.
A good example is the fennel. I planted seeds in the late summer, but they didn't germinate until early 2009. They did very well.
I planted some new things in February and March -- including these blue potatoes below. I waited til they grew eyes and then planted them several inches below the surface.
I had already planted white and red potatoes, but these were bigger "seed potatoes," so I cut them up into segments with 3-4 eyes in each segment, and then I planted them. This is what the plants looked like a few weeks after planting.
Around the same time, I buried a few "bare-root" asparagus plants. These are perennials, but you're not supposed to harvest any of the asparagus sprouts the first year. In fact, I can only harvest a portion of the sprouts next year, but then in 2011, I can go to town.
I also planted some red and yellow onions (on the right), and a couple varieties of radishes (on the left). Peas are along the back edge of the onions, and you can see part of the garlic row (left over from the fall) on the right.

Here are some beautiful radishes I pulled early in the season, after a healthy dose of rain and temperate weather.

And then some strawberries, but like the asparagus, I'm supposed to avoid harvesting them this year. Rather than robbing them blind, your supposed to give them time to establish themselves for more robust harvests in the future.

Some minor wildlife on the dill in the herb bed. I think it might be my imagination, but it really seems like we've been seeing more interesting insects in the backyard ever since we put in the garden beds. They're supposed to like the biodiversity and all the flowers, but even if there's not a causal relationship, it makes me feel good to think that they're on the ascendancy because of our "noble" efforts.

I've been meaning to share this for a while . . . the manner in which I transport freshly composted soil from the nursery to our house. You get a discount for bagging it yourself, and another discount for buying ten bags or more. Luckily, I could just barely squeeze ten bags into the trunk. All in all, it ends up being about $25 bucks for all this, so you can understand why I've made about 4 or 5 trips for the stuff.