March 14, 2015

Skippy’s Spring Calendar App – first update

We have a new update to Skippy’s Calendar App coming out soon. It’s based on feedback from our beta-testers. If you have the App, you’ll see a prompt for the update on your Apple Store icon when the update comes out. If you don’t have the app, you should get it! Here it is. What’s new in the update: “This update improves the vegetable picker, allows the persistence of your settings, and adds a reminder function for iOS8.” We’ll continue to support and update this calendar app so if you…

March 13, 2015

conditioning my straw bale – why?

I got a straw bale down to my garden, no not by dog sled, I pulled it, and now I’m looking into conditioning it so I can plant in it. It’s the first time I’ve tried straw bale gardening. It seems like a perfect solution to planting peas early – despite our late snow cover this year in New England. What I read is that I need to water my bale for about 3 days. This starts decomposition inside the bale and it gets hot. I can either wait several…

March 13, 2015

lonely celeriac sprout

Only one little celeriac seedling has finally sprouted. They are such delicate little sprouts. My seed was from 2012. Not so old, I thought. Wrong. I think I’ve told myself this before – celeriac seed should be fresh. I ordered fresh seed yesterday.

March 12, 2015

more sowing today – indoors under lights

Parsley, flat leaved Italian Greens, Sandhill’s Mix Kale, Tuscan Kale, Red Russian

March 12, 2015

sowing

More sowing. I’m not spending all my time out snow shoveling my garden beds. Today I planted: Endive, Tres Fine Escarole, Galia Kale, Winterbor My onion, broccoli and cabbage seedlings are up and seem happy. I’m still waiting on celeriac and eggplant sprouts. They are slow… The planting calendar I’m using this year is: skippy’s calendar app. A friend of mine coded this and it’s written to be simple and only give the information I need for planting. No ads on it. No flashy pictures. If you try it, let…

March 10, 2015

snow shoveling, chicken manure and straw bale planting

I have big plans for tomorrow (extreme plans?) St Patrick’s Day is eight days away and I hope to get a shovel into the soil and plant my peas on that day! I’m going to shovel more snow from my pea bed. I’m pleased that snow removal is working pretty well so far. I think I need to shovel more snow from my garden paths too, so the sides of the bed get sun and help with soil warming. I’ll also clean out my chicken coop and lay the poopy…

March 8, 2015

Skippy’s EXTREME vegetable garden report – the shoveled pea bed is thawing

I went down to my vegetable garden this afternoon. Hiked down the snow path and went into the garden to check out the pea bed hole-in-the-snow. I brought a metal poker to check for soil thawing. I was SO impressed with the progress! There is almost no snow left on the soil of the dug out area, just nice green rye grass – and MUD!! Yeah MUD! About 1 inch of soil is thawed. Its not draining, of course, as it’s all frozen below. I poked around in the mud…

March 7, 2015

Skippy’s Garden Spring Planting Calendar App

Our app was approved for sale (martini’s all around!) and is listed now at the Apple Store. The app’s official name is “Skippy’s Garden Spring Planting Calendar”. Here’s a link: Skippy’s Spring Calendar app Thanks very much to all who helped to test it!! Purchase of the app is $1.99 and will include all updates for the season. I welcome comments on the app here. Description: An easy-to-use app that creates a personalized seed-sowing calendar based on the average last frost date in your garden. The app is a mobile…

March 6, 2015

snow shoveling my pea bed

Actually it was really fun to do. Even at 25*F. The birds are singing and all over the place. and the dogs ran around and had a great time. I ended up getting quite warm and was in one thin jacket by the time I finished up. Good exercise. I had forgotten that the gate needs to be dug out to get into the garden. Fortunately my gate opens out. I dug down, cracked the ice of the latches, opened the gate and was in my garden for the first…

March 6, 2015

shoveling out a garden bed

I am not convinced that our 5 feet of snow is going to melt soon. I keep hearing about rain coming, and then it ends up as snow or it goes out to sea south of us. I think the sun is warm enough to start thawing the soil, but we’ve got this giant blanket of snow in the way. Soooo, I’m going to try shoveling the snow off of one of my garden beds. Just an experiment, I’ll see if the soil in a shoveled bed gets workable sooner…

weeks and counting until my last spring frost

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