Second String

This is our son Max. A college student at Millersville. Musician. Historian. Farmer. He even wove this scarf for his girlie.

The elder Farmer and I are the second string gardeners whilst Max is at school. He created a calendar marked with the dates of when all of the various garden varieties must be planted. We get our instructions on a weekly basis. This week, it was cucumbers, eggplant and beets. After consulting with Max, we decided to hold off on the beets for another week due to threat of continued cold weather. My aging body was grateful for this decision.

We did however start onions (that was a decision by his younger brother and I while grocery shopping and seeing a basket of red onion sets). We've never grown onions before, and after some consultation on the internet it seems that onions from sets don't hold up that well over time. So these (if they actually grow) will be consumed or dehydrated. Ended up getting one row and a few extras, marked with part of a plastic milk jug and a Sharpie.

Then the eggplants and slicing cucumbers went into the little coldframe made with salvaged windows, wood, and lined with silver insulation. It is surrounded by straw bales sealed in contractor's garbage bags for added warmth. I was pleasantly surprised how warm it was in there. Hopefully these will grow too.

Okay, we hedged our bet a little. Here are the pickling cucumbers in the house under the grow light. That's the celery next to it. I discovered that celery takes 5 months to grow. It's kind of spindly and needs to be transplanted to the next size pot. I dunno. This is an experiment.

In other news, work on the chicken house continues. It will be under roof by tomorrow.

And some things grow without our help at all. Here are some lettuce shoots reappearing from last year's seeds. Awesome. We found that growing lettuce on the deck in pots is the way to go. You can use up one pot while the next one is growing. Works much better than mass plantings in the bigger garden.

And fortunately daffodils don't need any help at all.


The lavender survived the winter. We're really liking lavender. It needs little care other than minimal pruning and harvesting, looks nice and does well in our nasty clay soil.

And never letting us down...chives given to us by our fellow alpaca farmer friend, Jodi Dominick of Sunrose Alpacas. Ever faithful chives.

The "second string gardeners" await our next instructions. Enough for one day...