Spring Garden Progress Update: April/May

We’ve got plants in the ground! I’m so ecstatic about it- I could stare at them all day, just willing them to grow a little faster. Honestly though, once we get things in the ground it feels like forever until we actually get to harvest anything. Here is an overview of the spring garden progress for the end of April and beginning of May. If you missed how we set up our garden, you can read more about that here.

We’ve gotten quite a bit done in the last two weeks. Some has been in the vegetable garden, some has been around the property. The list of to-dos is endless, but with a little one and funky midwest weather, we’ve definitely been moving at a slower pace. That’s fine by me.

The Raspberry Patch

The raspberry patch just might be the thing I’m most exited for this season. I’ve never grown or tended to raspberries. These plants are my MIL’s. We help pick (and eat!) them. Last year it was such a pain in the butt though. We hadn’t cleaned them up, and the patch was overgrown, so reaching the berries in the middle was treacherous (thorns and spiders galore!) This year I pulled out all the dead branches, trimmed them to neck height (not chest, because I’m short,) and even moved a few plants to create a y-shaped path in the middle.

We added a bit of compost and extra dirt around the base of the stalks, and I’ve been individually watering them (probably won’t last long.) My hope is that they’ll be waaaayyy easier to pick come harvest time. I’m also crossing my fingers that the berries will be larger this year because the patch doesn’t have to put so much effort into dead nonsense branches. I think being able to pick them faster will also help prevent rotting fruit which attracted the most annoying small black bugs last year.

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Rhubarb Plants

Rhubarb is SO good, but it doesn’t grow in California! I had never tried it (or really heard much about it) until I moved to Iowa City for school. I’m so excited to be able to grow it now. Last week I weeded and mulched the growing plants. Hopefully that keeps them cool and happy this summer. We just harvested our first few stalks this week. LJ loved chewing on the tart fruit while I worked on dicing up the rest for a rhubarb muffin recipe our neighbor shared.

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A Trip to Pleasant Valley Nursery

This was the second year we’ve visited this unique nursery in Baldwin, WI. They are a bit hard to find; they don’t have a website or a phone number to call. They do however have a Facebook page, and they usually put an add it the local paper in the spring with directions and a coupon. We start some seeds indoors, and direct sow other seeds, but there’s a few plants we like to buy that are ready to go. Pleasant Valley has great prices and the plants we’ve gotten have always done well. This year we got a few flowers for the back deck and front patio/garden, some herbs, and a handful of veggies.

I love having fresh herbs all summer so we grabbed a basil, apple mint, mojito mint, lemon balm, lemon grass, cilantro, dill, and lavender. I use the basil to make nut free pesto, the mint to make mocktails/cocktails, cilantro for salsa and toppings, and dill for canning pickles. This is the first year I’ve gotten the lemon balm, lemon grass, and lavender. I mainly grabbed them for their aromas, but I’m excited to see what I can make with them as well.

Hot peppers have been a challenge for us to grow from seed in the midwest. We don’t quite have a warm enough setup for the seeds, and we never start them early enough. I’m a low-maintenance gardener, so I’ll probably continue to buy hot pepper plants that are already ready. Travis picked out a jalapeño plant and a hot wax pepper plant this year. We also came home with broccoli plants, red onions, strawberries, lettuce, and bush beans.

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Around the Property

Travis ripped out the Juniper bushes in front of the house. We enjoyed their sight and smell, but they had grown much larger than they were supposed to and we were all ready for something new. MIL and I went to a local nursery and picked out McKays white potentilla. He also cut down a TREE that was getting way too big next to the front porch. It’s really opened up the front of the house.

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Last fall one of our trees fell on our neighbors property, so Travis and Pop cut it up to burn this week. MIL and I tackled the huge job of pulling all the weeds in her flower garden. We picked up mulch from our local Sunrise Nursery and got it laid down on the back half of the garden. If the weather is nice this upcoming week, we’ll get another load of mulch and do the front half.

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We also weeded and mulched the apple and crabapple trees. The apple trees seem to be responding well to their pruning, and the buds are all just beginning to blossom. I love stopping by the trees on our daily morning walk and checking their progress. We haven’t sprayed the trees yet, but we’ll do that in the next week or so. My in-laws say that only one of the two trees produces apples each year, and that they alternate. I find that super strange, but I don’t know enough about apple trees yet to understand why that happens.

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The Veggie Garden

We put the broccoli, onions, lettuce, beans, and strawberries in the ground! Now we have a cold front and have to cover the plants every night for a few days. I’m glad they’re in the ground, but next year I might wait an extra week just in case.

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Travis got the fence up, and we finished laying the cardboard and hay walkways. Travis also got the wood-chipper going and we made a nice little walkway in the middle of the garden. We might put a bench or some type of seating there, not really sure yet.

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The seeds we direct sewed are all sprouting. The radishes said they take 23 days, so they technically should be ready this weekend. I might pull one up to check on their progress, and wait a bit longer if they don’t seem quite ready. I decided to sew a whole raised bed of radishes as well since they have such a short turn around time. When they come up I’ll use that bed to plant bee-attracting flowers.

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What’s Next

We’ve got to get another bulk load of mulch to cover the front half of the flower garden and the vegetable beds. We’re waiting until this cold front ends to weed and rotate the tomato bed. I think we’ll be able to get the tomato plants in next weekend.

We’ve started to save the berry and tomato containers we get from the store to package our garden produce this summer. I think that will make it easier to give some of it away if we’re lucky enough to get a bumper crop. Fingers crossed!

We’ve got to get the rest of the plants in the ground, and I want to plant my herbs in bigger pots for the back deck. I know we’ll be pulling weeds as well. There’s also some general cleaning/burning/maintenance chores that need to get done. Hopefully we’ll get a good mix of rain and sunshine in the next few weeks!

Thanks for reading! Let me know below what you planted if you started a garden this year.

Caitlyn