Lettuce...hopefully

Up on the hilltop, the lettuce went in last week.  Hurray!  And then a few days later, a whopper of a storm tracked through our area and they were pummeled by strong winds and heavy rain.  Boo!

I considered placing a cover on the bed ahead of time, but then thought this may do more harm than good, as the winds would likely rip off the cover and cause further damage.

Battered Lettuce

Every Season Has Its Issues...

The weather finally turned a couple of weeks ago, after our April snowstorm, and I have been busy with bed prep, seeding and transplanting.  It’s wonderful to finally be working outside!

Since the weather outlook was promising, with temps staying above freezing for the most part, I spent some time this past weekend hooking up the drip system.  Of course, things didn’t run as smoothly as I would have liked.  A vacuum breaker fitting that my husband left on one of the hoses had corroded and essentially fused with the hose – my bad as I forgot to tell him that any fittings should be taken off the hoses before storing.

The faucet is a strange size (larger than usual) and requires specialty fittings.
The fitting that is fused to the hose is the only one that will fit and it was a PAIN to source.

Peppers, Past and Present

2016 was a banner year for peppers, due in part to the hot, hot weather.  But I won’t give the heat all of the credit – I did a few things differently last year and I’m confident that these changes also played a part in the bumper pepper harvest.

Brassica Starts - Rapini and Kohlrabi

The weather has been wonderfully spring-like over the past week - I've been prepping beds, hardening off seedlings and spent one day ridding an old perennial border of buckthorn.  Then, this morning, I woke up to this:

The pile of buckthorn brush sits beside the large tree on the right

Saving Allium Seed & Transplanting Leeks

In the past couple of years, I've been experimenting with onion seed storage.  Alliums are one of the few vegetable seeds that do not store well so it's usually recommended that you purchase fresh seed each and every year.  The issue I have is that I enjoy growing a variety of different onions and leeks which means that, in most cases, I only sow a small portion of the seed packet.

When I spend over $30 for allium seed,
it irks me that so much of it is going to waste

So my question was this - was it possible to save the leftover seed for an additional year?  This would cut my seed cost almost in half since I usually have leftovers for every variety except Copras.