The pair of cherry trees in my huge pots are doing great! They are filling out nicely and don’t seem to mind being in the pots at all. I had to move some flowering plants at their bases because a certain annoying cat thought they would make perfect scratching posts! She has been banned from hanging out near the trees.

My hostas are going nuts with all this rain, they love it. They are HUGE! Way bigger than your hand. Can’t wait to get in there and mulch and pull a few weeds and make that bed look tidy. Have to plant my Mother’s Day sale plants too, somewhere! Not sure yet where, but I’ll figure that out tomorrow.

My three lilacs, close to the moby, are blooming nicely, one a light violet color and the other two are much deeper in color. They have really filled out nicely and I’m sure they will keep growing nicely this year. The butterfly bushes are doing well, too! I’m sure they will be loaded with blooms.

Chives are setting flowers and I’m going to harvest them tomorrow for my first Moby garden haul. I’m going to chop them up and freeze half and dehydrate the other half with some other herbs that I’m trying to grow this year.

I decided that I wanted to try a few herbs this year. I’ve done chives in the past, they’re easy, and a box of oregano, but that’s about it. I’m not a big herb user in my cooking, but I’d like to change that. So I have made a list of a few herbs I’m going to try this year.

Sweet basil, rosemary, lavender, catnip, oregano, chives and mint.

I know there are a million others out there, but those are it for this year. I plan to gather the flowers of lavender for a little wreath and perhaps as inclusions for my soap. And the catnip, well, that is for our various felines this year. Basil and oregano I want to use in my tomato sauces and as a pasta addition. Mint for my tea and I’m going to use the chives on potatoes and in soups and such. Rosemary, also for soap inclusions as well as for baking chicken or grilling. I might even try and do a little olive oil infusions with the rosemary, I’ve heard that’s a great way to use the dried herb.

In the cold frames, I’ve had some successes and some failures. Tomatoes and peppers are doing pretty good. The best and most advanced tomatoes are Pink Ponderosa ( a gift packet of seed!) and Delicious. Most of the peppers are doing fairly well, however there is one variety that I think I only have one plant, so I need to go out and see which one it is and perhaps start a few more of that variety.

My broccoli seedings are really puny and not too exciting. I think I’ll have to go with sets from the nursery store and then in summer I’ll sow straight seed and see how that goes in the cold frames to extend into winter.

Cantaloupes are hanging in there and I have some cukes that are giving it a good try, but I let them get a little water when it was raining on Tuesday and forgot that a lot of my trays have no drainage holes in the bottom and they were very waterlogged when I checked them this morning. I remedied the situation and hopefully they will recover. I think so.

Ready to start harvesting some leaf salad real soon! Edward has been getting a few leaves of our salad boxes and he is VERY fond of it. I’m waiting to make a little spinach and leaf lettuce salads with some hardboiled eggs from Fran’s hens and some local bacon and a little homemade dressing on it… that is going to be a WONDERFUL first meal off the Moby farm!!!

I”m so excited! Both of our grape vines survived and are putting out leaves. I thought they were pretty dead looking at the end of the winter and a clipped them back to see what would happen. I almost forgot about them since they were mixed in with some tall grass, but today after I weed whacked and Maggie mowed and Jessy stripped out the dead tulip stalks, I found these two growing happily along! I might go and get one more to fill up the area between them, and to see if maybe we’ll get some more grapes this year!!! Our grape jelly was a big hit and it’s all gone. I definitely want to make more this year and I believe we are going to go to a local pick your own place that has Concord vines! I might even try and make a couple bottles of home brewed sweet wine but we’ll see… might just make grape juice!

I’m really using great restraint when I go to the hardware joint. I really am. I only came home with a 9 pack of broccoli starts and a sweet basil plant and a nice full rosemary. These and a few flowers for my window box, and those few Mother’s day plants, that’s been it. I am trying to do my whole garden from heirloom seeds this year and I think I’ll be about 95% successful. A few broccoli and a couple herbs to get me started, that’s about all.

Now, I did see that they had all their remaining fruit trees on sale for only $6 each! I thought about it all afternoon and I just couldn’t stand it. I’m going to go and get a pair of pear trees for the south side of the moby. And a replacement apple for the little one that didn’t really make it. I wish I could get a pair of fruit cherries, because my front door trees are only flowering. But the fruit cherries are $29 bucks each and you need two… That’s a bit much. I think I might plan instead a picking trip up into Michigan, since it is the cherry capital of the world! I love cherries, but my kids are not that keen. That’s fine with me, because I plan on canning at least a half dozen jars of cherry pie filling and freezing a bunch as well this year.

But those pears are calling me…. and they even where LOADED with fruit! So was the apple! Of our 4 remaining apples, 2 are loaded with apples this year, easily over 20 apples on each tree. The other two are doing okay, but they just didn’t bloom as much and I don’t see but one or two budding babies on them. But that’s okay, they are doing well. I don’t expect to see the fruit around the Moby mature for another year or two. Strawberries are setting nice fruit but there are only about 30 plants or so out there. Raspberries are the same way. Growing, but certainly not overwhelming their beds at all. I might plant a few more raspberry canes to fill in where a few died, but we’ll see.

I was talking with Maggie and we might add a second pair of fruit trees right at the ends of her bird feeder bar. I think they would look lovely there, especially blooming in the spring, ad the birds would love the additional perches and such. We would loose some fruit, granted, but not that much. Besides, we can share. And it would probably attract some neat birds that like fruit too! We had a couple orioles last year… they might like fruit trees near the feeders this year!

I’m very interested in creating a sort of permaculture of fruits and perennial herbs and flowers. I’ve already noticed that we have quite a few toads, snakes, squirrels, birds and bunnies visiting our little moby lot! Way more visitors than when we first moved in. And I like the idea of having fruits and such that bloom every year without a yearly investment. It’s a good thing.

Well, that is the state of the Moby gardens at the moment. Not super exciting. My onions and garlic are doing nicely, they are planted and doing their thing on the southside. I forgot to take a picture of them, but to be honest, they are not that exciting looking yet. They kind of look like weeds, just a little bit. Once I pop a few tomatoes in the bed with them, it won’t look so, well, weedy. Or raddish and carrots… not sure yet. I might just make that bed all root veggies. But then, I might not. Not sure yet.

Tomorrow I plan to get all the fabric in place and plant some beans and peas and maybe transplant a couple of the bigger tomatoes and see how they fair. It’s not been below 32 degrees and frosting for about a week now. But it’s been a little chilly. I could stand to loose a few pink Ponderosa and Delicious as I think I have about 12 plants each easily! I have a baggie of Hyacinth beans and I’d love to plant them somewhere cool. Still pondering where they might really enjoy growing. I might plant some near the shed. And a few on the southside as well. We’ll see!