When I said no more plants?  Well, since I decided to build a DIY raised bed out of a pile of scrap lumber I found under a tree, I’m going to ignore that this year.  It’s 6 x 2 feet, and has room for plants.

I still have all of my old containers too and they will also be full of plants.  Plants everywhere!  Peppers, tomatoes, squash, snap peas, garlic, potatoes, and whatever else looks cool.  The garlic is already growing and doing well.  A friend from garden club gave us all cloves to try out, and I put it in when I planted my bulbs last fall.  That is future Cincinnati chili garlic, amigos.

It was a long winter, and we had a couple decent days of snow.  We got our usual amount of rain and grey days in true western Washington style.  All of the snow melted at my elevation in a day or two, of course, and then it went back to rain.  But the mountains, which can get 70+ inches of snow from just a single storm, all have decent snowpacks this year.  It’s May 3rd, and snowpacks are around 9-10 feet at 5200′ elevation.

So now that it’s spring, the gardening bug is back again.

My goal is to grow enough veggies for myself and enough extra to donate to the food bank in town this summer.  Now that I have an idea of what it’s like to garden in this area of the country, I should have more luck with plants this year than last.  The other thing that’s helped is joining a few regional homesteading and canning groups on Facebook.

We’re running about two weeks behind on planting, despite one 80 degree day that broke a temperature record set about 80 years ago.  Next Wednesday is G-Day!

And next Thursday is mead day.  Bottling a few, racking the 101 Mead and blackberry wine, and throwing together some berries for a gallon or two of mixed berry wine. That’s an experiment, but I’m very sure that unless it comes out tasting like vinegar, I will find people to help me drink it.