Canyon of the Ancients

Last weekend I had the opportunity to go for an impromptu camping trip.  It is a little early in the season, but the weather has been having warm spells lately, so I thought that I would brave one chilly night in the tent.  The destination was a place only a three hour drive from my house in the southwest corner of Colorado.  Canyon of the Ancients is a National Monument.  A very special place to be able to visit.  Scattered throughout the valley are the remains of a culture that mysteriously vanished 700 years ago.  There are stone buildings crumbling into the desert and broken pottery washing from the ancient landscape.  A truly magnificent place to explore.

Most of the buildings were scattered across the landscape and required a good hike to get to.  However, there was one area known as Hovenweep that was a collection of buildings that made up a town in a shallow valley.  I was excited to see this area because I had read about it many years ago and it's story was intriguing.

Many of the buildings rose straight from the edge of the rocks they perched on.  Many were built along the edge of broken cliff faces which makes me admire the agility of the people that used to inhabit this space.  As I walked among the ruins I tried to imagine what it might be like to share this valley with hundreds of people living in and around this town.  A different way of life indeed.  These people carved out a thriving community from a barren, arid landscape and then suddenly vanished, though there are only theories as to why.  

There are many other places that I would like to explore in this area, though I only had time for this tiny adventure over the weekend.  When I have another weekend to spare I will be heading back to explore other areas of this national monument.  The relics here are numerous and I have only begun to scratch the surface of what I could learn from this place.

Winter's Last Word

Here it is the end of April.  There were a couple of weeks of nice, mild days with temps in the 70's in the beginning of the month, but this morning I woke up to a blanket of snow on the garden.  Walking outside I found it was a very wet, heavy snow and there was nearly an inch coating everything in sight.

As I stepped outside I saw a few heavy flakes settle to the ground.  It is still snowing this morning and I am unable to see the mountains to the south or the mesa to the north.  I am hoping that the sun gets to work on warming things up here soon as I am not ready for winter to return quite yet.

My onion beds have a nice layer of snow on them, but I expect they will be fine as they are fairly hardy and tolerant of the cold.

The garlic was a little weighed down by the heavy, wet snow, but should bounce back with no problem.  These plants are used to frigid temps as they have been growing since sometime in January when the weather was much colder than this.

The peas should be ok as long as the cold doesn't stick around for too long and the broccoli sprouts that I just planted out last week will hopefully survive this little cold snap as well.  The rest of the garden is still lying dormant, but will be planted out in just a few short weeks.  I hope that spring can get it's act together by then.  

Planting Broccoli

The weather is at the point where we are still getting chilly overnight, but the daytime temps have been in the 70's.  There are likely still a few more frosty nights in store, but spring is well on it's way.  I decided that now would be a good time to plant out my broccoli starts.  They are still on the small side, but they have been spending the better part of last week outside and seem to be thriving despite the wind and wild temperature swings.  The forecast is looking like things are going to keep getting warmer from here and even if temps do dip low, I think these seedlings are hardy enough to survive just fine.

I am trying two varieties of broccoli this year.  One is Atlantic and the other is Goliath.  The Goliath seedlings are definitely bigger than the Atlantic, but that doesn't mean that they are growing faster.  The Atlantic seem to be generally more compact plants as I recall which meant that they grew nice compact flower heads too.  The real test will be to see which variety can grow good sized heads before the flowers start to open.  Last year Atlantic won out over the Calbrese variety that I grew alongside it.

I set the seedlings out on the bed to get the spacing as even as possible.  I generally try to give my broccoli plants about 18 inches of growing space per plant.  In my 3x10 foot bed I fit eleven plants in a zig zag pattern across the bed.

After I planted all the seedlings in the bed, I arranged the drip irrigation so that it nearly touched each plant.  To make extra sure that they are getting enough water I poked a series of holes in the tubing close to each seedling.  A quick test with the water on let me know that this bed looks like it is irrigating just fine.

The final stage of planting the broccoli involves mulching in the bed.  I have been using grass clippings that are readily available.  I like that they don't blow away as easily as leaves and do a really good job of holding moisture in the soil.  Once I get the whole garden well mulched I hope I can get away with minimal watering in the heat of summer.

The thick layer of mulch is really multi-functional.  It traps moisture in soil. It shades out weed seeds and can prevent them from germinating.  It protects tender young seedlings from extreme temperatures by creating a micro climate right around the plant.  Since it is also biodegradable it will provide a little extra nutrition for my growing plants as it breaks down over the summer.  

A Gift if Irises

In the past year I have been helping an elderly lady in town with yard work on my time off.  It has been nice getting to know her and I enjoy the hands on work in her yard.  This spring she decided that she needed to thin out her Iris patch and asked me if I would be interested in taking some.  I told her that I would be right over.  I ended up digging out four clumps of irises that should be white, yellow and purple.  Once I got home, I broke up the clumps into individual plants as best I could and arranged them around my small patch of spring bulbs that I planted last fall.  If they all survive, this flower bed will be quite lovely when they all start to bloom.

Right now they look a little beat up from their recent move.  Digging them out and separating the bulbs was pretty rough on them, but I hope that with a little tlc they will bounce back and start to grow again.  I mulched them in with a heavy layer of grass clippings to keep down the weed pressure since this bed was previously taken over by ragweed and cheatgrass.  I am hoping that the irises do well here and spread out to fill in the whole bed so I won't have to worry about weeding it anymore.  Now that the hard part is over I just need to keep up on watering it and give it time.  My reward will be a lovely colorful bed of spring blooms.

Planting Potatoes

The potatoes that I harvested last fall were kept in a dark closet over the winter in an attempt to keep them from sprouting.  Apparently they should have been kept in a colder place because they started to sprout some time in late December.  The sprouts have been growing steadily ever since.  I stopped eating them a couple of months ago because they were getting to be too soft and wrinkled for my tastes.  The long sprouts they were growing were going to give me a nice head start on the season, so I kept them for my spring planting stock.

 I had planted three different type of potatoes last year: Yukon Gold, Chieftan, and Purple Viking.  I had just enough of the Yukon Gold to plant one 20 foot row, but had an abundance of the Chieftan and Purple Viking.  I planted one row of each to try to make things even out. The left over sprouted potatoes will be going to a seed swap in a couple of weeks so I can share my over abundance with others in the area.

Planting potatoes with such long sprouts was a new challenge for me since I had never  done it before.  I did a little research and learned that laying them down in a ditch to plant them would be the way to go.  I certainly couldn't dig holes in my soil deep enough to cover these long sprouts, so lay them down I did.  I still planted the actual tubers about a foot apart, but the sprouts overlapped each other in the trenches that I dug.  I am expecting a thick mat of potatoes when they make their way through the soil.  After I covered all the potatoes with soil I laid down the irrigation lines over the rows and turned on the water to make sure all was in good working order.

This year I extended half of my garden beds to the fence line so I only needed to plant one large bed with potatoes. 

 This bed got a thick layer of grass mulch once I had another delivery of grass clippings.  As they grow I will keep adding layers to the mulch to protect the growing tubers from the light so they don't turn green on me.  In a few short weeks I am hoping this bed really comes to life.

Pea Progress

On the first day of spring I have made it a tradition to plant peas in the garden.  This year I planted them where my tomatoes grew last year so I could make use of the trellis without having to move it.  It was still fairly chilly in the few weeks after spring, so I kept the newly planted bed protected under a hoop house, which also helped to keep the leaf mulch from blowing away in the gusty spring winds.  It only took them a couple of weeks to come up even though it was chilly, but once they were up I don't think there was any stopping them.  Peas are hardy little plants and a couple cold nights didn't even phase them.  They are now at a point where they are putting out little tendrils to grab on to the trellis and when the weather gets a little warmer, they should really take off.  I am hoping that I will have some to harvest in just a few more weeks.

Spring peas are one of my favorite crops if only because they are one of the first harvests of the season.  I always get excited when it's time to plant them because it means that winter is officially over and the gardening season has begun.  

Onions Are Up

The onion sets that I planted a couple of weeks ago have already broken the surface of the garden beds.  You have to look pretty close to see them, but they are coming up in droves.  I am also happy to report that the tiny seedling onions that I salvaged from cat damage have been making progress as well.  I hope they take off as well as the sets that I planted, but honestly I am just happy that they survived at all.

When they get a little taller I will lay down another layer of mulch over them to reduce the weed pressure in this bed.  If I wait until they get too tall, their leaves will be tangled together and will be harder to get the mulch down on the ground where I want it.  I hope to be harvesting this bed by August so I can squeeze in a fall crop like carrots or spinach before the year is through.  My pantry should be nice and full again this fall if all of these onions grow to a good size for me this year.