Early Spring Garden in TN

I am currently a gardener at Sequatchie Valley Institute in TN- www.svionline.org . It's my first LARGE SCALE garden project ever and its for education and consumption so I'm learning a LOT and I believe there is a LOT to share.

We started in February- prepping some garden beds, creating compost piles taller than me with weeds and leaves from all the garden beds. I have before and after pictures I will include I'm sure.

Between early March and now, we have planted hundreds of seedlings in flats- Brassica's, Leeks, Collards, Mustards of various varieties and some herloom variaties, Asian greens, Lettuce (which we have a succession of lettuce that will hopefully give us 3-4 harvest's), Gourds, Squash, Beets, Basil, MISC. Herbs- I will detail out the herbal spirals in another blog in the future. I thought I planted WAY too many Broccoli flats, however it turns out not one came up because the seed was too old. So unfortunately this year, no broccoli unless I trade someone brussels sprouts for it.

In the ground we have collards still from our winter crop and just now pulled most of them up as they started to bolt. The Raddishes are getting pretty big, something is chewing on the leaves but not doing too much damage to them- the one's in High Lonesome are getting attacked by Deer and now I have cages over them for a temporary solution.

We also planted spinach, transplanted some Lettuce, Parsley, and i've planted hundreds of flowers all over- Callendulla, Zinna, Cosmos, Sunflowers, Larkspur, snap draggons, etc. to attract preditor insects.

Our lady bug population is HUGE this year thanx to a left over mattress that apparently served as the lady bug Hillton for the winter.

Our worms are Amazing. We have a vermaculture bin- but our compost is FULL of worms, so the ducks seem to chow down over at the compost pile after I go retrieve some for planting- and still don't make a dent in the numbers! Its great! Go Worms! I have several jars of worm tea right now from our vermaculture bin.

We have hundreds of tomato seedlings with many varieties.

We also pruned the kiwi a MASSIVE amount this year- its about 5 yrs old more or less. The guys fixed the walkway trellising and it looks amazing and there are buds already.

I transplanted Quince Suckers this month as well. Quince is really exciting for me as I've never seen the fruit and I hear that its DELICIOUS cooked with this recipe I kept for ages now for when I ever saw a Quince.

With a little help from friends I was able to find 3 morel's so far this season. It's COLD right now so maybe tomorrow when it warms up I will go back to the spot to look for more.

We have hundreds of fruit trees and the guys did a lot of trimming in that department this month. We also had some trees fall in a Microburst which took out one Cherry Tree but could have been MUCH worse- it fell pretty much perfectly. Chris and friends cut up all the pine and cherry and I learned to stack wood "Johnny Style" and made a great smelling collection of Cherry and Pine for many fires in the future.

I also planted some odd things that I found in our seed collection: Prickly worm (weird flowers) - some asparagus peas which are neither peas nor asparagus- but looked kind of interesting and are still eddible. And some other variaties- we will see if the seed comes up - some of the packets were old. We tried to use EVERY older seed this year- if it doesn't come up now, it won't ever was my thinking. So we have lots of some things and like broccoli and several rows of raddish- we didn't have at all. The ducks liked the left overs of the raddish seed that didn't sprout. :)

SVI is also helping out with a garden in the city near Look Out mountain - The Bethleham Center - about 85 kids between 1st grade and i think jr high school in an inner city neighborhood are starting a couple of community gardens and this is the one we are working with. It was REALLY fun! The pictures so far are online, as it grows, I will post more pictures up.

So... Its been more relaxing around here than it sounds. There was lots of help with things - we had several volunteer groups and visitors help out with double digging at High Lonesome, and mulching and whatnot... its been really fun having so many interesting people. But the weather still hasn't warmed up completely. We have days of glorious beauty and days of sleet and cold, but we believe this is our last cold snap now. (really it is)

I'm currently working on bamboo art and pyrography. I've been scavenging dried bamboo and making jewlery and such. I am also busy with a Bamboo arbor.

The snakes are out on the sunny days- days when I want bamboo- and thats where they want to sleep and wait for ducks to lay eggs. But they are harmless and slow with the temperature still a bit too cool.

The surface rock removal across the creek from us is working hard and is more visible with less tree coverage, i swear they blast there - they arn't supposed to. I want to go scope the operation out and check the water nearby. I would love to do some water testing in the area anyway. How would one go about testing your fish for mercury anyway?

Food for Life is coming up and we are very excited about it and busy. I will post more on this later too.

Wed/ Thursday- THATS when it gets warm enough to put some of these seedlings in the ground and more herbs direct seeded! :)