Berries and Carrots, Potatoes and Radishes

It has been so dog gone cold around here for so long that this winter has felt like it has stretched on forever.  But I think we might be turning the corner!  So excited to get started on landscaping and garden spaces.  I'm not sure how long my body will hold up in terms of getting major projects accomplished so I'm trying to get as much done as I can right now.  We did a few landscaping things last fall but really it was mostly buying some really cheap clearance plants and sticking them in the ground, knowing they might get moved once we had a better plan for where to put them.  I still have about 4 flower beds that need filled.  We also fenced a side yard for use as a vegetable garden.  However, now that we've lived here, we are seeing that side of our house get very little sun.  So we're on to plan b with that.

I intend to have a berry patch in one corner of the yard and found a clearanced blackberry last year which appears to have survived.  I really have been wanting gooseberries because my granny had gooseberries but I've never had good luck finding them locally.  I did find them awhile back at Home Depot but they were really scraggly sticks that didn't survive.  Last week, I was thrilled to find them at our Orscheln's, looking green and healthy.  They also had some raspberries that were in great shape so we got those as well.  It's still too cold here to put them in the ground so Zeke and I transplanted them out of their plastic bags and into a planter until it warms up.  He didn't want to get his hands dirty but he loved squeezing the water bottle to water them.  (The squeeze bottle is a great trick for having little hands help water plants.)  He was so excited once the big kids got home from school; in fact, as soon as we were in the door, he raced over to the patio to show Kenson, shouting "Me!  Me!"

This weekend, the kids and I also put in some containers of carrots and radishes as well as some potatoes.  I have never grown potatoes in my own garden and I'm trying something different.  Our soil is really full of clay so potatoes might not do so great in that soil.  So I am using a method that has you put the potatoes right on top of the soil and then cover them with straw.  That minimizes their contact with the soil and grows the potatoes in the straw instead of down into the dirt.  Hoping it works as it would make harvesting them much easier too.