Spring Things

Back in March I wrote about the way we are starting seeds this spring.  After we downsized and moved to our new house, we lost our little green house and are using our garage.

https://windyacresnaturalfarm.blogspot.com/2020/03/gearing-up-for-gardening.html

This has worked well for our smaller garden.  Most of the plants you saw in that post have been transplanted into larger pots and moved to another area.

This week I selected a few small sweet potatoes from last fall's harvest and put them in jars of water.  In a few days they will begin to grow roots and send up leafy shoots called "slips".  When the ground is warmer, these will be transplanted directly into the soil where they will grow into mature plants and form sweet potatoes.

The  parsley that I grew in our cattle supplement tubs last year is beginning to send up flower spikes. Parsley is a biennial plant. It grows the first year it is planted producing the leaves we love so much. The second year it makes flowers and seeds.  This plant is from last year.  I will let this plant make seeds which I will harvest and plant next year. By the way, native pollinators love the flowers.

A Phoebe built a mud nest on our front porch.

Phoebes are in a class of birds called "fly catchers". In Oklahoma, we are all familiar with our state bird, the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Well, there are other less showy birds in this same category. We had a pair of Phoebes at our old house. They returned year after year to build a nest above a light on one of our outbuildings. Many times I watched one of these little birds sit on top of a post or some other structure on the lookout for bugs. Suddenly it would take off and catch some unfortunate insect in mid-flight. I've not been able to get a good picture of one of these birds, so I copied this one from allaboutbirds.org.

Finally, we are beginning to get some early produce from the garden.  A couple of days ago I pulled these radishes out of the ground.  They are a little small, but I just couldn't wait!

Happy springtime everyone!