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how it went or is going...
the peas and onions are doing fine. peas started flowering a few days ago. onions are on th third round of planting by seeds. supposedly these will be edible size by fall. if so i will be very impressed. i'm also guessing that i will have to thin them somewhat for that to happen. otherwise i'll have sets for next year (which is what i was expecting). hmmm.
seeing the peas flowering (these have white flowers) reminds me how much i've missed fresh peas and pods from last season. seems ages ago now even after a mild winter.
the turnips which suffered the most frost damage and i was wondering if i'd lost all of them. there were enough seeds planted that i have a nice patch of them and didn't have to thin. i'm contemplating a few leaves to give them a taste for fresh/cooked greens soon. the second turnip planting in another space was last week. sprouted fine, will have to thin these if the bunnies don't find them.
only one frost the past week so i'm thinking we are getting close to being ready for me getting the rest of my seeds in the ground other than the okra. i'll wait a while longer on that since we still have somewhat cool nights here or there.
overall though, it's been a good spring season with some rain here or there that i'm not having to water all the time. but the past week has been dry. cloudy today but no rain.
in other news, the swiss chard is coming along ok, onion sets are doing well (worm poo for those we'll see how they compare to previous seasons when we've done this differently), rhubarb is still ready to be picked, strawberries blooming and putting some fruit on, garlic doing well...
for critters it's been an ok year so far, we've heard a pheasant calling for the first time in several years out back. had to take a grackle nest out of the top of the lighthouse. always fun. decided to fill it up with sprayfoam crack filler to keep them from doing it again. once by accident, two no longer a charm, won't let them get a third try. it's too high up to be fun to check. spray painted the foam so it doesn't stand out so much visually when looking up. by keeping after them with the air rifle to discourage them and keeping the nests out of the cedar trees we've cut the grackle invasion force by quite a bit, yet when they come through in the spring and fall they are in the thousands so this is purely a local turf control effort that is pointless longer term, but it does keep them from regurgitating poop from their nests in the birdbaths.
the rest of the smaller birds around and the many other species of birds do much better when the grackles aren't so numerous either. three years ago it was a flock of twenty something grackles, now it is four or five. that means a steady effort at discouraging them because they don't go away or stop building nests just because you take one nest down... usually it takes until mid-june and then it slacks off, but even then they can still put a nest in a surprising place. two weeks ago we had a nest in the wheel of a propped up wheelbarrow, much easier to deal with than the top of the lighthouse...
had a muskrat half way up the pathway to the house yesterday. gave it a gentle nudge with the air rifle. bunnies have already had their warning shots... i hope the hawks or feral kitties will get them before i do. same with chipmunks, but will also put some rat traps with peanut butter out for them soon. it's no fun and i would like it much better if the snakes could eat them all, but that isn't how nature works sometimes... we do have a good snake population all around. something about all these rocks... :) keeping the chipmunk numbers down is the only way to keep the strawberries from getting raided. i've increased the strawberry plantings all over to compensate, but i'm hoping those actually end up as jam and not chippie food. we'll see how that goes.
ok, so how is your gardening season going? any new adventures paying off well or frustrations you are figuring out?
songbird