The Moods of March

March is going...going...gone. I fear that most of it was eaten alive by my cubical, but in spite of my indoor confinement, spring sprung.

The weeks of March flew by in gusts of moody magnificence, bringing every type of precipitation imaginable to Arkansas. Rain, hail, sleet, snow and fog accompanied temps from the 20's to the 80's. We became vigilant of the weather forecast and did our best to accommodate the extremes.  A string of hot sunny days prompted me to rip the entire covering from the greenhouse entrance way.  The three-sided tunnel which remained was a perfect home for the plants to stay toasty and get a nice breeze. A few days later, when the temperatures plummeted below freezing, the plastic cast-offs from the greenhouse became the perfect covering for newly sprouting seeds in the garden bed. We tromped through house each morning and evening with flats from the greenhouse, trying to keep them at a desirable temperature.

All in all, we survived the moods of March.

The cold frame boasts four healthy tomato plants, new rows of beet and carrot seedlings and a continuous supply of lettuces.  We've been told that the lettuce will start to get bitter after the third cutting, so it may be time to start eating from the lettuce in the garden bed and use the space in the cold frame for something else.

The cold frame as of a couple weeks ago.

The greenhouse hosts an odd assortment of things these days including brassica seedlings, varying maturities of tomatoes, peppers, onions from seed, and newly seeded flats of okra and basil. We also have fruit trees on the rise. The fig tree suckers are budding; a mystery branch Mike decided to pot already has leaves; seven peach pits (planted last fall after canning) have sent up healthy-looking shoots (left); and seven Meyer lemon seeds are keeping us in suspense. We've rehung the shower curtain door so as to keep the temperatures in there a little warmer now that the weather has stabilized on April-showers mode.

A fig branch showing off its new leaves in our kitchen window. 

The "flower bed" is rapidly being remodeled to be more of a garden bed.  Bulbs are being dug up and sequestered to the shady patch in order to maximize space for a small amount of spring crops.  I plan to push the limits of our small area by following intensive square-foot gardening and companion planting principles.  At this point, the bed is mostly full of lettuce, greens, cabbages, a variety of peas, carrots and beets.

In all of our areas we are following the up/down/up/down planting concept.  This is simply a way to maximize your space by growing root veggies in between crops that grow above ground. For example, our rows go something like this: bok choy, beets, lettuce, carrots, greens, beets, etc. Aside from utilizing the space well, the plants help each other out, hold down the soil and provide a nice leafy canopy for ground cover.  Just make sure you are providing them with plenty of nutrients and that you time their sprouts so that one does not shade the other out.

Other progress includes the rapid return of red clover in the back yard. When we moved into this house the yard was mostly hard clay with very little growth.  Treatments of compost and seeds have paid off and we love having healthy green growth in both the front and back yards. My bare-feet are especially thankful for the soft clover.  We enjoyed the surge of bees to the yard last year when it started blooming, but this year we made a point to cut it before it bloomed so as to maximize nitrogen levels in the soil.

While progress at the house puttered along during March, progress at the farm idled. Without a place to stay, we were hesitant to put in our irrigation system or plant too much in the ground. But with too many brassicas getting root-bound in the greenhouse and the itch of the growing season passing us by, we threw our hesitations out the window and spent April 1st at the farm planting. Rain was in the forecast for the rest of the week, so irrigating crops wouldn't be an issue.  Two hundred feet of potatoes, 75 feet of onions, 50 feet of broccoli and 25 feet of hardy root vegetables later, I woke up with soreness in my legs beyond any roller derby aftermath. Our main goal is to get our soil loosened and working, but vegetable bi-products are very welcome.  And if the whole thing flops...April Fools, I guess!