Our Garden Says...Help Me!

March was such a warm month here, and we were so excited to get outside to start cleaning up our flower and raised vegetable beds. Dallas started growing pansies,  spinach, and lettuce in the basement under the grow lights. He has since started tomatoes and peppers. The fruit trees were pruned. We purchased flats of alyssum, pansies, petunias, begonias, and geraniums at our favorite Amish greenhouse, Conestoga Valley Greenhouse in Lancaster. New cocoa mat liners for the hanging baskets were found at Rohrer’s Seeds in Smoketown as well as all of the organic seeds needed for our vegetable garden. We also bought 25 new everbearing strawberry plants to put in this year. We’ve been so busy!

A cold snap happened in the first two weeks of April that caused us to come to a complete stop. We even had SNOW on April 9th, which is so hard to believe! We are now scrambling to get everything planted. Dallas and Mike (our part time helper) spent the better part of the past two days cleaning up and planting the flower beds.  Dallas planted the spinach and lettuce in garden, but his pansy seedlings didn’t do too well.  We are worrying about our peach trees, as they had bloomed prior to the late freeze.  The apple and pear trees are just beginning bud break, so they should be okay. Guests can look forward to some amazing organic fruit, herbs, and vegetables coming from our garden over the next few months!

We are hoping to have a good crop of blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, apples, peaches, pears, cantaloupe, tomatoes, zucchini and yellow squash, peppers, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, (oops, that reminds me, I still have to order my sweet potato slips and organic potatoes!), garlic, basil, mint, thyme, rosemary, sage, chives and lavender!  If anything fails, we are so lucky to live in Lancaster County where there are many roadside stands and farmers markets to fill in the gaps!

Come and visit...we promise there will be plenty of variety and colorful plates here at the B&B this summer and fall!