The middle of May finally brought nice weather to upstate New York. It rained for the whole first week of the month, but there was a window of cloudy days in the 60/70 F range. During that time, I made huge strides for planting out my seedlings, hardening off the next round, and have direct sowed quite a few seeds as well.

Getting my seedlings some much needed sunshine during the hardening off process.

The large garden bed was looking pretty empty at the beginning of May, aside from some garlic and onions down the middle of the bed. Thankfully all 3 of my lavender plants in the bed survived the winter and were starting to put on new growth. Time to start filling it up!

My new Birdie’s raised bed has been planted. 7 overwintered dahlias as well as some nasturtiums, snapdragons and calendula. I also direct sowed some marigolds and cosmos along two of the edges, as well as one watermelon in a corner.

During a sunny day last week my dad tilled this section between our inner fence and the deck stairs. Once it was mostly weed-free I put down cardboard with a pile of garden soil and compost on top. This will hopefully turn into an explosion of squash plants in a couple months. I direct sowed summer squash, zucchini, and melons. We plan to add wood mulch to hold everything in place and slow down the weeds/grass from regrowing. I planted a couple of zinnias along the fence and there is one large strawberry plant in the corner which is growing 3 berries.

First couple of in-ground strawberries are sizing up!

The cold, wet spring has been bad for the summer plants, but it has been very good for the spring sown, cool crops. I’ve made several leafy green harvests like this and my peas in the greenhouse are starting to flower.

A bunny rabbit has proved to be a nuisance. It is currently small enough to fit through the chain link fence and has been eating some of my plants. It nibbled on 2 coneflower and one clump of chives. It completely ate 3 broccoli and 2 kale plants this past week. I have put covers on what I can, but soon the plants will be too tall. Hoping we can either catch the bunny or scare it away.

A few of the flowering perennials are starting to bloom including my first ever poppy flower! It’s huge and bright orange. The other two smaller poppy plants nearby are also working on flower buds, so hopefully there will be more soon, and perhaps in different colors. My rose bushes have leaves and are also working on flower buds.

I tried growing coreopsis from seed and got a few sprouts this spring indoors, but they are still tiny. I decided to purchase 2 small starter plants from work in order to get flowers this year. Coreopsis has small flowers and is a good dye plant, both for a dye pot and for hammering or steam transfer onto fabric. I plan to direct sow some of my seeds around the established plant to widen the patch.

Two of the three apple trees have several clusters of tiny fruit, the bees pollinated almost all of the flowers. In about a month, I will go through and thin out each cluster to one a single fruit. I will also probably cover the fruit with a mesh bag to try and protect them from pests. These are very young trees, but I am excited to get a couple of apples per tree come fall!

Here’s a before and after of my initial planting in the large in-ground garden bed. The second photo was taken about a week later. I cleared out a couple of flowering kale and mache plants and re-set the bed with new plants.

Peas, kale, peppers, broccoli, marigold, cabbage, radishes, basil, cosmos, and the first of the tomatoes. This section also has 3 small perennial lemon balm plants and a large lavender plant which is currently hidden behind the tomato.

Looking forward to getting more plants moved out in the coming weeks and hoping to see a lot of direct sown seedlings as well.