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Bed prep: weed, broad fork, spread compost, rake. And then plant. This is my life this week (and next week, and probably the week after that). Bed prep and plant all day. Sleep. Repeat the next day and the next until the garden is finished. You can plant seeds any time of day, but if it is hot and sunny you should transplant starts at night so they get a rest before being exposed to another sunny day. 13 days after planting that first bed the peas are poking up about 1/2 an inch. My goal starting May 16 was a bed a day… but even after working in the garden every day only 6 are completely done. It is a good thing this garden is primarily for our family as the stress of running it as a business would drown me in, well, stress. The two potato beds are in, as well as both potato boxes.

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The two carrot beds are planted, the third apiaceae row is prepped and parsnip seeds have been planted in the last 26 feet. Celery and parsley starts are ready to go in as soon as I find the time. The second half of the garlic bed has been planted with leek starts in dibbled holes and the onion bed is prepped and ready for planting. Which brings me up to a grand total of 6 finished, 3 partials, 10 more veg beds to prep and plant, and 6 cover crop beds to prep and plant. I will be busy for a while.

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It has been chilly, two mornings ago we woke up to find ice in the puddles. I am still lighting a fire in the greenhouse at night. And I have been shuttling trays of starts in and out of the greenhouse daily to harden them off to direct sun, wind, and cold. The hardiest of the starts, all the non flowers, moved down to the main garden yesterday and successfully spent their first night of the season outside under row cover.

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I started a tray of summer crisp lettuces for mid summer harvest, 500 bush beans to plant in a low tunnel in two weeks, and more herbs.

A beautiful bumble bee, the first of the season that I have seen, was resting on my tomato starts in the greenhouse and I transplanted it down to the honey berry bushes at the vegetable garden. I saw another one (with orange on its abdomen) this morning buzzing around the currant flowers but I was sadly without a camera. I am attempting to learn how to identify bumblebees this year and I am also participating in a citizen science project called Bumblebee Watch. It is actually pretty hard to get a clear photo and then to identify. I need an insect field guide!

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While out on the road last night we saw two porcupines and a lynx cat. We stopped and watched the young lynx for a while. They are very curious and will watch you back. Can you see it?

In addition to the wildlife show, we were also treated to some beautiful late night Alaskan views. This time of year 10:00 PM feels more like 6PM and it is hard to go to bed.

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Time to get off the computer and back to work! We were gifted a quarter of spring black bear so I need to process the leg this morning and then get back out to the garden for some afternoon/evening planting.

And flower season is beginning…

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Sometimes you work hard but no matter how you try, forward progress is elusive.

I spent Thursday morning in front of the computer completing some correspondence and writing my weekly blog post. Of which I neglected to save a draft of the working document. It was a chaotic morning in the household and somehow I did something to my mousepad that swiped away my browser and when I brought word press back up, the blog post draft was gone. Lesson learned: hit save draft all the time. I made a few stilted attempts to recreate what I had written but it was gone, from the draft and from my head. Oh well, some days are like that… But I had to get outside and get some physical work done after that. Spending one more minute on the computer was just too frustrating!

Late last Friday we were headed home from the Kenny Lake School graduation parade (we could not attend the graduation in person but watched it online while in the school parking lot and then did a drive by congratulations). We were treated to a magical wildlife moment on the McCarthy Road. We live near the Copper River herd of plains bison. Wood bison are native to Alaska but these guys were introduced here 70 years ago. They mostly live on park and native lands and can be seen along the Copper River and Kotsina bluffs or down on the river bed at spring calving time. For years now, bison have wandered across the Kotsina River using the McCarthy Road to travel to the 5 mile bluffs for the food they like to eat there bringing them into close proximity of humans. I like them better across the river. They are beautiful but very, very dangerous and while they have never come onto our own land, several years ago one spent months wandering through our neighborhood. I do not wish to bump into a bison on the way to the garden. We see them occasionally while driving to and from town. There have been a few almost incidences on the road over the years. I have been charged by one when it was in the middle of the road and I startled it as I drove around the corner and had to slam on my brakes. And then hit the gas to pass it as it charged. And one attempted to head butt our Subaru with the school bus carpool as the car drove by. But this particular bison was calm and content to graze the fresh grass while we watched from the truck.

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I have rediscovered my gardening muscles this week. Every morning I feel each one with a new awareness. During the sub arctic winter I do not spend a lot of time repeatedly bending over or lifting heavy shovelfuls of soil, pushing wheelbarrows or carrying heavy trays around. Once I get going, I can work all day but each morning starts out with some extra time warming up. Garden yoga is kicking my butt.

I prepped and planted the pea bed last Saturday. Two 50 foot rows of oregon giant flat peas and two 50 foot rows of sugar snaps. They are not up yet but it was good to finally get something in the ground!

I also had a tray of brassica greens and other miscellany that was supposed to be planted for spring eating. Before break up, I had planned on moving the greenhouse north by 6 or 7 feet, away from the continually subsiding low spot of melting permafrost in the perennial garden. But the shed project happened first and though the progress of moving the shed across the yard, skirting it, and organizing it (I can actually find my stuff!) has been fantastic, the wood shed addition has not yet been built onto the storage shed. Rounds of unsplit firewood is in a pile behind the greenhouse effectively shelving the “moving the greenhouse” project for the spring. The greenhouse was frozen to the ground anyway. I had planned on modifying the south greenhouse bed, once outside of the moved greenhouse, into a cold frame for early and late greens. The greenhouse is packed full of starts so my overgrown tray of early greens could not go in there and instead of feeding them to the chickens I decided to plant them out in the main garden and see what happens. So far they have survived. I planted some arugula, radish, and turnip seed at the same time.

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I was prepping carrot beds when I touched base with the post office to let them know I had live plants coming in the mail only to discover the plants had already arrived the day before. Off I went to town to collect the plants and Conner and I spent the afternoon digging holes, adding compost, and watering in the new white and red currants, honey berries, and a jostaberry. Four of the five perennial beds are now complete with plants. The fifth bed is a blank canvas. I really do not know what I want to plant there.

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The currants and honey berries already in residence are flowering. They are not showy blooms but beautiful none the less.

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On my way back from the post office I spied this tenacious dandelion. Dandelions might be non native but I love them anyway. First one of the year and it grew on a desolate bluff.

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And the cotton woods are developing their catkin seed pods. Soon there will be cotton fluff seeds floating around everywhere.

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The last several years I have missed the coltsfoot flowers. I have not been able to figure out if the native plants did not put up flower stalks or if I was just so immersed in my own things that I did not notice them. But this year I keep seeing them everywhere. Coltsfoot is a valuable herbal remedy for lung conditions. I am happy to see them this year.

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In the main garden I am weeding and sifting compost and prepping beds for planting. It is the daily garden grind right now and I am behind on planting as the soil and weather conditions have not exactly lined up to make bed prep easy.

In the yard in front of the house there is a section where nothing grows as the area is devoid of soil. I had the idea to build some potato boxes with the kids. I had some non certified potatoes I don’t want to put in the garden, some old poplar boards and 2 by 2s that have been used and reused in the garden and are nearly at the end of their life (but not quite), and some soil that once the potatoes beds are done for the year can be raked out to improve the front lawn. The kids decided they were not interested in potato boxes at all but Tim and I spent an evening modifying the plan to efficiently use the materials we had available and ended up with two 2 by 4 boxes. The idea behind a potato box is that all season long you attach additional boards to the box as the plants grow up and keep adding soil and mulch. At the end of the season you unscrew the boards and pull out an entire box worth of potatoes. We’ll see if it works. If nothing else, it will improve the front lawn and be something to talk about all summer.

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It is time to get back outside and back to bed prep and hopefully planting…have a good week!