April 29, 2013 Carrots, chard, broccoli, and beets

   A beautiful day to work in the garden. The sorrel, chives, lavender, lovage, and oregano are growing beautifully.  I put in some additional oregano I'd started from seed, and also some young parsley seedlings.  
    Dug bed just south of the herb garden, and dug and spread old manure on it.
    Then planted the baby chard and broccoli seedlings from the greenhouse, plus broccoli seed and beet seeds.

    Daryl and Dan came up and moved the carrot box to it's new location, and also moved the coldframe off the spinach, since 80 degree F temperatures are expected tomorrow.   I didn't want to fry it! 
The carrot box is an old 4 sided wooden box about 4 feet on each side which I found behind the shop a few years ago and it's been a great way to grow carrots in looser ground.  I moved soil into the carrot box, plus a wheelbarrow of sand, and one of manure.  Then planted carrots: 
Heirloom Touchon from Burpee on the north half of the box, Heirloom Danvers Half Long on the south.  I used all the seeds in each package, which was 2000 in each!  Didn't seem like that many.  I think I'll have a lot of thinning to do!   I covered the seed with a sprinkling of compost from my pile at home.   Then I watered well.....hopefully, carrots will have a earlier start this year than I've ever given them before!

    Attached the hoses and watered the whole garden, plus weeded the grapes, blueberry, and apple beds, and took down the big stalks by the south fence, last years Jerusalem artichokes and Sweet Annie.
    When I was done, I picked a little sorrel, spinach, and 2 stalks of asparagus (1 for Kay and 1 for me.)
Added some fern fiddleheads from my yard when I got home and had a lovely salad! 
   The garden is in good shape now.  I don't think I'll get to do much work on it for the next week.  Except perhaps to lay the black plastic where I hope the woodchips will be dumped.   I won't plant the warm weather crops like tomatoes and peppers until mid May, but I do want to finish trimming up the strawberries, and need to weed the asparagus patch and the old strawberry patch where I hope to plant corn and cucumbers later this spring.