Gardening Progress

We had a nice, sunny day today - finally! I even got a light sunburn on my face. The high reached 58 degrees which doesn't sound like much, unless you have been living through this cold, rainy Oregon Spring. Then 58 and sunny sounds like heaven! I pulled back the remay fabric to check on my radish patch. They are doing really well. In fact it is hard to tell that a dozen or so of the first radish that sprouted were pulled up by the birds. I am thinking that in a week or so it should be safe for me to pull off the remay cover for good.

I would then like to place it over the bed of lettuce. I am just waiting for the birds to discover these little, baby seedlings that have come up. Below is a picture of two "Australe", a red butterhead. Obviously, one needs to be thinned out but right now they are too small for me to safely grab one and not accidentally pull up the other. They are listed as being ready for harvest at 49 days. It is difficult for me to look at them right now and be certain that they will be ready to harvest in 6 weeks. But that's what the label says and Johnny's wouldn't lie to me!

I spent the good part of Saturday afternoon down at the big garden. Since the previous 4 days were finally rain free, I decided it was time for the first mowing of the season. The grass was still damp and the ground was pretty wet in some areas. As you can see I left a few tire tracks in the mud, but all in all it went pretty well. I decided not to attempt to mow the back section of grass. There is still a lot of standing water back there and it would really cause a muddy mess to try to attack it right now. So, 3/4 of the garden grass was mown and I also picked up all of the downed fir branches and limbs that had fallen over the course of the Winter. There is still a lot of work to be done before any planting can take place, but at least I can now see the beginnings of this year's garden.