April in the Garden

It's been a busy month on the yard work front.

At the start of the month we pulled down the ivy from our trees. I don't have very good pictures from before, so I stole this one from Google Earth.

The ivy was a good 30+ feet up the trees. We cut it at the ground and waited a few months for it to die off before pulling it all down. We got all but one of the trees de-ivy-ed.

That's a big ivy pile. About 20x20x3ish.

On Saturday we got around to picking up this pile so we could work on the stuff growing underneath it. This patch was pretty solid ivy.

We had some helpers and they were key in the ivy removal process.

One day of work and DANG it looks so much better. We got out almost all of the sprouts and a heckuva lot of roots, but I'm sure we'll be pulling pretty frequently for the next few months, with less and less over the next few years.

We exposed some plants I didn't even know we had! Discovered a red huckleberry under the forsythia, and discovered that the other plant is a mountain huckleberry. Sweet! (Also ID's a plant in the backyard under the hemlocks - it's a Mexican Orange! Not a mock orange because it has five-petaled flowers, not four and more evergreen foliage)

Last week we worked on the weeds in the back yard.

We got a new "action hoe" (I call it a D weeder because the end is shaped like a capital "D") and it made quick work of the soft weeds. 

I got my lettuce, carrot, radish, and herb seeds into the raised beds, too. The radishes, at least, have sprouted. The lettuce is just now starting to pop. It's sunny and 60 today, so I bet I'll get some growth today.

I also put some starts in from the basement grow operation. I planted a couple marigolds, broccoli, and a couple kinds of kale.  Everything else is still perking along under the grow light.

I just transplanted the tomatoes last weekend when I did the planting in the beds.

I was able to retrain myself from separating too many of the tomatoes, but I have to admit, I did separate one or two. But I do have intentions of giving them away.


I had been watering the starts with a spray bottle, but it was such a small bottle that I had to keep refilling it. I finally got so frustrated I came up with a new device.

A 2-liter with about 7 tiny holes drilled in the lid! The holes are small enough that not much water comes out at a time and it doesn't wash away all the soil from the starts. So perfect. And FREE!

Apparently the weather report is calling for 80 degrees on Thursday and Friday. Time to start watering the raised beds!