It’s that time of year when the garden needs help transitioning from spring to summer. Here is a rundown of my current to-do list for the garden:
Spring spinach planted between kale. The cool-season spinach is ready to pull and the kale will quickly fill the empty space.
I densely planted the vegetable beds in early spring with the intention of pulling out the cool-weather crops when the temperatures heated up. That will make room for the warm weather plants, which are just now needing the extra space.
We don’t let the chickens free-range in the garden at this time of year – their claws are too destructive to tender plant roots. Instead, we really focus at this time of year on rounding out their diet with plant debris.
Chickens getting their springtime nutritional supplements in the form of garden debris and bolting spring crops.
I try to attack our compost piles at least every season by turning them. This will energize the microbes in there busily breaking things down. That ensures we have a steady supply of nutrient-rich compost whenever we need it.
The spring bulbs have all finished their show for the year. This is the time of year to tie back the leaves, letting them send energy back down into the plant bulb. When the leaves are brown and dried, you can cut them off entirely.
Red currants and juicy strawberries are ready for harvest in late May
Juniper is harvesting strawberries and red currants with me every evening after we get home. It feels good to be harvesting fruits and we may need to even fire up the canner to make some preserves.
It’s a good time of year to spread mulch to help with weed suppression and water retention. The days are cooler and the weeds are a lot smaller than they will be if you do this later in the season.
Getting ready to spread springtime mulch
Finally, it’s time to think about reconnecting our drip irrigation system. I can’t say enough good things about how helpful this has been. It was a modest investment to ensure our crops had consistent, even watering.
What is on your gardening to-do list at this time of year? Are you filling your harvest basket with any late spring goodies yet? Tell me about it in the comments below!
You’re a gardener after my own heart! I do all these things that you do. I have always fed my weeds to the chickens and used sawdust as mulch. One word of warning about using sawdust though, if you’re using sawdust as mulch on the annual garden, always be sure that it has aged a year or two before using. Also it helps to put a thin layer of fresh green grass mulch down under this kind of mulch.