This morning dawned clear and beautiful with the yard full of bird song. Peg and I grabbed our coffee cups and headed out to one of our favorite spots; our wrought-iron chairs in the grape arbor. As we looked through the luscious pink Yum-Yum (nectarine) flowers at the beautiful clear blue sky, we figured it was a good time to give this week's garden report.
The garden boxes are doing well,
and the yard is greening up nicely.
When I cut the grass I left a few patches of clovers to help attract the bees. The plan seems to be working cause the Yum-Yum tree was buzzing when we walked past it.
Looking down the row of boxes the closest one is our salad box.
This loose leaf mix is wonderful and we have been picking enough for us to make huge salads, 4 or 5 times a week for 2 weeks now.
The next box is our asparagus patch. It is off to a slow start like usual, however if ya look close
you can see a nice fat one just pushing up.
Next is the strawberry patch and although it has been flowering a lot no berries yet.
In our 4' x 12' garden box we have bush beans for the Spring and they are all up but 3, and growing nicely. On the far end, the green onions are beginning to spread and do their thing, and just in time cuz we are getting low in the freezer from last Fall's crop. Bad thing about planting early is: frost got our cucumber plants that we planted on each end of the box. We will replant them this week and hopefully we will see
them in next months report.
The Japanese aka Loquat plums are swelling and both trees are loaded, so it looks like a good year for them. I have already had several inquiries about them from my wine-making friends.
Last, but far from least to report, is the budding of our fig tree. It is the son of our last tree, that was wiped out by a hurricane. It is finally getting big enough for us to have enough figs for a pie or something. Time will tell.
As we walked back to the house we were making plans of picking as many grapefruit as we can off our loaded-to-the gills tree. We squeeze them to make the sweetest, brightest juice. A lot of folks from around here say they don't like grapefruit, but we have a theory about why they don't. It is in the late Fall is when the citrus harvest begins, so along with lemons, limes, and oranges, they pick their grapefruit, too. We've learned that the grapefruit need more time to ripen to develop their sweetness because they are so much larger. Here it is nearly March and this is when our grapefruits are at their peak. The folks who don't like grapefruit say that what they don't like is the sourness and bitterness. Well, that's because they've tried them when they were also trying the sweet oranges. That was too early. To our credit, we have persuaded a few of our neighbors to at least give 'em another try. So, along with the grapefruit we plan on picking this afternoon to juice, we also have to bag some to bring to our friends who are now turned on to them...and they want the bags to be big...and loaded. We don't mind; there's plenty to go around. God has certainly Blest our yard, so we can in turn, bless others. Aint that how it's s'posed to work?
