Quick! Plant Stuff!

If you've been reading the blog for a couple weeks you know I've been itching to plant stuff in the garden, but knowing that it will most likely snow (and freeze) several more times before the end of May....despite it being in the 70's quite often...and that we can expect there to be hail in May and June...and maybe in July..

I really wanted to plant stuff this past Thursday--I didn't have anything planned (other than dishes and laundry) and figured it would be a good spring break activity.  But, hey, guess what?  It snowed on Thursday!  The snow melted quickly, but Thursday was a no-go for planting in the garden.

See my new cement duckies in the garden?  Well, you can see one of them...

This afternoon I gave in to the itch--carrots and onions will be fine, even in the snow and hail, and lettuce should be ok, too (or we'll plant more, right?)

Step one...turn the soil.  We don't own a rototiller, there isn't room in our garage and the garden just isn't that big.  My plan was to turn the soil, rake, and get a few things into the garden.

As I turned the soil I found some fun things---a carrot (pictured), some rogue garlic (not pictured), and

 a lot of worms (yay!)

 There!  All turned and ready to rake!

While I worked on the big garden, The Boy worked on a couple of the flower boxes--digging out the old plants and getting it ready for more seeds.  (See my ducks in the background again?)





Unfortunately, by the time we finished turning the soil, this is what the sky looked like...d'oh!

The Boy and I scooted inside...and checked on the indoor plants--check this out--we have growing plants!

 The dogs were not very excited...

We watched the rain turn into snow and figured we were done for the day.  But, we do live in Colorado, so about an hour later we were ready to (quickly) plant.

 The Boy was very excited to help--here he is planting onion seeds.  We also planted lettuce, carrots, scallions, and garlic.  We planted garlic and onions last fall as well, so that is some of the green pictured.  Near The Boy's feet are last year's asparagus plants...clearly we don't know how to take care of it, so we are just leaving it for now.

As Mr Ranch pointed out, we finally have some good soil--seven years of adding garden dirt from the store and composting everything possible has finally led to something other than clay in the garden.  Maybe our carrots will be longer than two inches this year!

There!  The first seeds are in before the second round of rain/snow!  Yay!  If all goes to plan we'll have fresh lettuce in a couple weeks.