In non-gardening news, Mark has been mowing the lawns and generally gearing up for another season of being the Maintenance King.  Looks like someone has taken a shine to the weed-whacker; the mud was still wet in the nest.  You can see Chico in the second photo, wanting to get a better look at what's going on.

In gardening news, the seedlings continue to grow, but they could look better than they do.  Mark is wondering if we bought some lousy potting matrix.  We used the same brand last year, and the seedlings did the same thing; they have poor color and brown shrively leaves.  Once we got them in the ground they perked right up, but we were hesitant to put them out because they seemed a little frail.  Last year we put it down to the weather, but this year the weather is different, so now it's down to the matrix.  We'll see how this years' seedlings do, and will switch to a different matrix next year.

In celebration of Earth Day, Mark is dividing a bunch of chives and plans to do some trash pickup along the road ditch when it stops raining.  He's also found a new nursery for our seedlings, as you can see here.  This was originally a reptile tank that's been in our storage trailer for some time.  The seed trays fit in there just right, more sunlight can get into the wee planties, and we have the option of running a heat lamp out there if need be.  He's still covering these at night with a blanket, but the cold crops probably would rather he not.

Check out how well the rhubarb are doing, behind the nursery box!

It's been a dreary chore of a day, but I brightened it up with some Creamy Carrot soup.

To start, I cubed the following:

2 pounds of carrots
1 large onion
3 large potatoes
1 head of garlic

These were sauteed in butter, covered with water and simmered for 30 minutes.  At that point, I introduced:

2 cups whole milk
1 tablespoon each of ground ginger, ground cayenne pepper, and paprika. 

Blended it all together, froze quite a bit, will enjoy the rest with some home made wheat bread.  Mmmmm!

Things have been happily growing here in the garden laboratory, with the tomatoes getting their 2nd and 3rd leaf sets under the protective glass of the cold frame.  Eggplants, cauliflower and broccoli are all growing fast and have great color to their leaves.  Meanwhile, the peppers have not grown any leaf sets beyond the first pair, and are content with pointing their leaves more vertically each day.  Mark was very pleased to notice 2 more rhubarb plants nudging through the straw of their bed, which you can just see to the far left and right in the first photo above.  We look forward to being able to harvest some rhubarb next year.

The center photo shows Chico, the official garden dog, drinking from what appears to be an ordinary bucket of water.  What Chico doesn't know is that there are 2 bunches of asparagus crowns soaking at the bottom of the bucket.  What looks like his reflection is really the yellow mesh bags these crowns were shipped in.  The 3rd photo shows the ultimate destination for those crowns; a portion of an asparagus trench Mark started over the weekend.  He ended up digging 2 long trenches and planting 18 crowns per trench.  It's a lot of work but the results will be wonderfully tasty in a couple of years.  Mark is now turning his thoughts to more immediate crops and spoke of putting in some lettuce seed this morning.

It might not be extra luxurious just yet, but those two rhubarb plants you can see poking above the straw are pretty exciting for Mark.  These plants belonged to his grandfather and have been moved from garden to garden for many years.  Mark brought four plants here from his father's townhouse in Des Moines a couple years ago, and it looks like they have finally decided to give it a go here in Leon. 

In the foreground you can see the wee tomatoes, peppers and eggplants as they soak up the rays in the cold frame.  They had a nice water soak this morning to celebrate their second leaf sets coming in; you can see the tub to the left of the  These plants are still coming in at night, while the broccoli and cauliflower are enjoying the starry skies.

Just beyond the cold frame and the rhubarb bed is Chico, the official Garden Dog.  He's a very handsome Chow/Heeler mix  who killed a gigantic mole last week---it was the size of a pregnant rat.  So far, that is the only mole we've seen this year but the neighbors tell us their yard is riddled with mole trails.  If Chico can't keep up we might have to get this ebook to get rid of them ourselves.  A nice woman at the flea market said she's heard that Double Bubble put down in their runs will be toxic for them, but it would take a few pounds to take out a mole the size of ours.  Yikes!

Throughout the growing season we're also preserving our vegetables by canning, freezing and dehydrating.  Dried onions are one of my favorites because they lend a taste of caramelized onion wherever they're used, so I like to blend them with fresh onions in recipes.

This isn't really a recipe, just something I threw together with the last of our dried split peas and lentils.  It comes out an unattractive grey color so I didn't photograph it, but rest assured, it's tasty!  What I combined was:

Roughly 1 cup each of dried split peas and lentils
1 head of garlic, peeled
1 chopped fresh onion
1 biggish handful of dried onions
1 cup chopped carrots
Scattering of bay leaves, sweet basil, Himalayan sea salt, and black pepper
Enough water to cover this all by a depth of 2 inches

Let it fester in the crock pot on "high" for much of the day.  Serve over warm buttered noodles with some Parmesan cheese---mmmmm!!

Woooo-hooo, they are shipping the asparagus crowns this week!  Time for Mark to decide where to make their bed.  This winter he'd intended to put them on the west side of our storage trailer, but after consulting the Oracle in the left-hand photo, he's not so sure.  (The Oracle is a well-worn copy of the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, 1959  I like to think of it as Mark's external brain).  The chosen location has the advantage of being close to a large amount of dry cow manure, but it might be shadier than the asparagus would like?

The middle photograph shows some changes he's made to the cold frame, using lumber that was in an old pickup truck a friend gave us.  This frees up the straw bales for other uses, although it's doubtful that Brownie will get them back as dog furniture.  They'll probably turn into mulch for the small garden plot you can see just behind the cold frame.  Sorry, Brownie!

After anxiously scanning the seed catalogs and plotting this years' garden, Mark finally gets to start some seedlings! 

Far left photo shows the trays of damp seeds & potting mix covered with plastic to incubate them.  Mark has tucked the empty seed packets on top of the trays so he can tell what's what. 

Second from the left photo shows the seedlings as they have just erupted through the soil, along with a bunch of little plastic identity tags that we hope are right.  The Bearded Dragons didn't think much of losing their light for a short time, but Mark feared his peppers were looking spindly.

The next photo over was taken 26 March and shows everything looking pretty good, except for the eggplants, which are shy.  Mark has a very green thumb, but eggplants do seem to be a challenge in one way or another, each year.

Far right photo maybe shows why the eggplants are wanting to stay in the warm soil?  It's cold out there!  That's our cold frame, fittingly covered with snow, and as the young plants are introduced to the Great Outdoors they will be spending time there.