My vegetable garden has, regrettably taken a back seat to the other projects I have going on: starting new hives, teaching classes on gardening and beekeeping, building a new chicken coop, and prepping for farming up at Newton Farm in West Kill this Spring have successfully taken up the majority of my headspace. I’m doing what I can to catch up. This week, I spent a bit of time trying to repair our dead lawn. I spread garden soil and compost over the surface of the ground and chopped it in with my garden hoe. Sprinkled in a mix of fescue seed and clover just in time for some rain. Hoping that we can get some grass growing before we have to tear down one of our most janky raised beds and replace it. The chickens will appreciate this. They’ve even done their fair share of aerating the soil.
Cindy, one of the farmers up at Newton Farm, is starting some of my White and Red Currant tomatoes in the greenhouses so I’ve at least got that covered. They are my favorite so I’d be bummed not to have them. I’ve got to start some of my greens and peppers indoors right about now, though so they are big enough to transplant in mid-April. I’ve got some of these leftover goofy coir tablets that I soaked in warm water to get them to expand. Threw some sweet red pepper seeds, german green tomato seeds, yellow pear tomato seeds and rainbow chard seeds in them and gently covered them over using a chopstick. MacGyvering at it’s most simple. Once they sprout, I’ll separate the seedlings into new pots with some compost-rich seedling mix that my pal Annie got from McEnroe Farm up in the Hudson Valley. They’ll eventually get hardened-off outside for a few days before I put them in their new home in the garden.
I’ll start direct seeding some radishes, lettuce and peas/beans really soon. Excited to start getting my first harvests of fresh greens. It’s been too long. My body is crying out for some fresh backyard goodness.
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(Handful of seed-starts next to the houseplants my cats can’t resist chewing on.)
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