It continues....

What a week, weather wise! The gray, cool, cloudy, rainy weather brought back (bad) memories of last July. Hopefully it is not a harbinger of things to come. :) However, shortly after waking up early Wednesday morning, I heard a robin singing. 'Twas a cheery sound, especially when I peeked around the shade to see the gray, misty, foggy early morning; rather depressing to the spirits. Then, after walking to the other side of the house, I heard a White-Throated Sparrow, happily giving his song. Perhaps we humans are the only ones who let the weather get us down. The birds don't seem to mind in the least. :)

Last post I wrote about the raised bed/hugel beds in the seed starting greenhouse. Here's some more about that.

 Under the spread goat bedding is a hole about the length of the bed, with logs filling it. We then add some soil back in, along with lime, since the soil in that area seems to be acidic.

Better Homes and Gardens type fanciness, NOT! :)

Then keep adding soil and lime from time to time, until we get almost full, then add a layer of good dark compost, like this.

Pretty, ain't it?

The beds serve as a lower level spot to put seed flats; when the starts are in the garden, I'll transplant crops that I want to grow later into the fall/winter. Kind of an experiment, to see if I can keep my darlin' and the little munchers in homegrown toothsome delicacies late into the fall. Should work, think I. On to other things,

The rhubarb was coming up happily until......

Yup, deer ate some of them down.

I don't remember having much of a problem with the deer chomping on my rhubarb, but this year, they came by one night and gobbled some of them up. I assume they are really hungry after the long winter we had. Time to extend the electric fence, I guess. I needed to do it anyway, this will light a fire under me to get it done. :)
Here's some more seedling pics.

Baby Cascade Glaze Collards, yum yum!

Teide, a red lettuce I'm trialing this year

Happy vibrantly-green tomatos

Lots of kale

Planning to start setting out transplants on Monday, both in the growing tunnel and under "low tunnels"- kale, green onions, lettuce, collards, chard in the low tunnels. Zucchini and cuke transplants under low tunnels inside the grow tunnel, the double buffering should protect them well from any (hopefully) light frosts we have from now until June. We'll probably set out the first tomatos under double cover in about a week or so. And of course, more seeds will be going into soil blocks as the spring rolls along. Busy, but fun, time of the year.
And here's some from the not-too-distant past, for old time's sake. :)

Simpson Elite lettuce, large-size and oh-so-good.
 

Lutz Green Leaf or Winterkeeper beets.

Ali Baba watermelon

Kuroda carrots, we love them.

And, my apologies for this last picture. 'Twas an awfully long, hard winter, as y'all know, but every time I look at this on my monitor background I marvel at the beauty of the cold, windswept landscape.
If my tracks weren't in it, it would be perfect, I think.

Next post I think I'm gonna talk a bit about soil blocks, maybe even post a little video clip of us making some. Gotta run, y'all take care now. Happy trails! :)