March 2021 – Spring Temps Makes me Ready to Garden!

Unlike the old saying of March coming in like a lion and leaving like a lamb this year we saw spectacularly warm weather almost the entire month of March 2021. I think all of us Minnesotans were holding our breath waiting for one last hit of real winter before spring. Its happened so many times before in March that the fact that we didn’t get two feet of snow felt quite odd. (Though we did get a few inches and April has dumped some serious snow on us…) As always though, if its warmer than it should be, I have no complaints. Except for that two week serious cold snap in February we had an incredibly warm and mild winter.

One thing that did happen in early March 2021 though was Minnesota having a winter storm warning, a thunder storm warning and a tornado warning, in different parts of the state, all at the same time!

I put in a vegetable garden last year but, admittedly, did not take very good care of it. To be fair, last year was absolutely insane and I so hope this year will be a better year for everyone.

I am very excited for my garden this year.

I’m even excited to make pickles again even though I totally burned myself out in 2019 after making 40 quarts. Remarkably, we still have four jars left and they’re still SO GOOD even though they were a simple refrigerator pickle recipe!

That year I really made some fantastic dill pickles and only have plans to tweak that recipe a little. (Putting a tablespoon of pickling spice in each jar adds incredible flavor but biting into a whole clove is rough… I’m going to be putting the pickling spice in little sachets from now on.) I tried (and failed…) to make bread and butter pickles last year but I learned a lot and can’t wait to try again.

I have, so far, failed miserably at growing any kind of peppers in my garden. SO BIZARRE.

But lodi and I love and use bell peppers in our cooking all of the time and have become totally addicted to bannana peppers on just about EVERYTHING. Especially pizza and hot dogs lol.

So, I am absolutely giving peppers another go. More of them and in the East side of the garden with no climbers to block their sun for the majority of the day.

I also think I need to give my garden some more, rich, organic soil.

I already bought all of our seeds for this year’s garden. When I went to get seeds last year (probably because everyone was stuck at home in quarantine) our entire town was wiped out.

You can see from the photos that our local fleet store wasn’t going to let that happen again!

Lodi and I have spent so much time on this little farm tearing down and fixing and getting rid of trash from years of neglect that we’ve finally reached a point now where I look around and there isn’t hardly anything left to take out and our little farm is feeling a little bare.

Time to start adding I think.

My little vegetable garden can use some love and work. Thinking about fun signs, maybe some solar lights and just some good old fashioned character.

Most importantly for my little garden is I need to change the fencing I have going around it. I need to cut it at the corners and move the fence from the outside of the raised beds to the inside.

(A huge struggle every year is getting my climbers up as far as they need to go to actually climb on the fence. Time to fix that.)

My biggest struggle here has always been, “Where do I start?” We have a MASSIVE yard while I’m most drawn to cozy little nooks and outdoor spaces that feel almost like indoor places.

How does a person accomplish that in a half acre empty field?

Lodi was most excited about my idea I had years ago to plant some trees across the front of the barn and pasture.

I am a Minnesotan after all and I don’t know anyone who hasn’t planted a tree (or thousands) if they live here.

Funny story: My mom took down a whole pile of trees at her current location to the horror of all of her neighbors. Her response? “I planted all of those trees 40 years ago and I can take them out if I want to!” My whole family has literally planted THOUSANDS of pine trees in our lives.

A nice north wind block would be great. So that’s being added to our hopeful list of “maybes” for this spring and/or fall. We’ll see! I’m pretty excited about the idea!

Speaking of a “hope-list” have I told you guys about our plans for adding a lower (second) deck in front of our current deck?

Its going to be made of pea gravel with the addition of a big stone fire ring that’s big (and tall) enough to sit on. This will take out even more yard (less mowing) and finally grow up our fire pit situation. Not that I don’t like what we have, its just a bit far away and I am done with tracking sand everywhere.

This is what I mean:

I like the idea of having the fire ring at the edge of the pea gravel deck so we can sit in chairs in the grass around the fire as well but our fire pit now is literally “light it and forget it” because its totally surrounded in sand.

It’s really nice not to have to worry about a fire spreading! SO we might just make our new “deck” bigger to totally surround our new fire pit too… but we’ll see.

(You might notice a little addition to the back of the house in the plans for our new deck of a small screened in porch addition… this is my “hope-list” after all lol.)

I am aware that with spring suddenly here our time is about to start flying by and we already have a pretty extensive to-do-list this summer not to mention tons of plans in the garage too.

I know I’ve said this basically every blog entry for the past year: Yes we’re still working on the basement lol.

Finally coming up here on the blog within the next few weeks is our basement living room reveal! With that done I have switched focus to the basement bathroom and am almost finished with that space as well! (This all took me so long I imagine the sound of a crowd cheering at this point…)

This March 2021 were you dreaming of your gardens too?