Spring Time in Vermont

Spring has finally sprung here in Vermont after what has seemed a very long winter. Of course I spent a good portion of that winter in the Caribbean, so I am not complaining. I have spent a week at home here in Bennington and in that time I have finished setting up the vegetable garden for the coming season. I have also been finishing up the clearing and cleaning up of the southeast corner of the garden which had previously been used as a bottle dump (and worse, I pulled out a bed frame and a tricycle).

Blueberry

Strawberries

Currants

I planted the berry bushes at the west end of the vegetable enclosure so I could more easily cover them with a bird net when needed.

The mulch around the beds comes from the stumps of some of the old and dead trees from around the garden. I hired a stump grinder for the day and spent a good few hours reducing those stumps to nothing but mulch, which I am now using around my raised beds and other areas that need it. That’s a win win.

For the last two years I have had four 5 feet by 12 feet raised beds in the garden, but it turned out to be a little difficult for weeding toward the centre of the beds, also I had more than one crop in each bed which was also a little annoying. So this season I have made a bunch of smaller beds which will only have one crop each.

As well as the fruit I am planting potatoes, broccoli, kale, red and yellow onions, peas, tomatoes and carrots. I have an another small plot behind the garage which will have sunflowers (unless the chipmunks eat them) and marijuana And possibly spinach. I am growing herbs on the balcony and if I can get away with it more tomatoes and jalapeños.

This being Vermont there could very well be another frost, so I am not planting out anything that will be killed off by the cold until I return home from my holiday in Greece with Stephanie. But everything should be in the ground by the second week of May.

I do love my garden and in today’s world of overprocessed food, it’s good to be growing some of my own.