This is a guest post written by my buddy Heather from Massachusetts. I thought it would be fun this year to post Monthly Garden Chores from both the West Coast and East Coast. You can see my January garden plans for my Seattle, Washington garden HERE.
Our friend Mavis and I have often wished we were neighbors. We both have teenagers {and their busy sports schedules}, chickens, gardens in suburbia backyards, and we love DIY projects! The main difference is we live on opposite coasts and that means drastically different garden zones and garden season rhythms, plus it makes popping over for some tea, coffee and muffins a bit more difficult.
So she asked me to put together a garden update from the east coast. Here is southeast Massachusetts I’m in zone 5b, which means, for now, we have to be a little more patient for spring. But come spring and summer, absolutely everything blooms. The flowers, the bushes and the trees – the memory of spring in New England keeps me here all.year.long!
Seeds I’m Starting Indoors this Month:
In years past I’ve started seeds in a windowsill only to have them grow spindly and pathetic in the weak New England pre-spring sunshine. I would usually struggle along with seedlings until Mother’s Day and then hit a local greenhouse like the sunshine-starved, cabin-fevered, pasty looking new englanders we are.
The last frost date is around the third week in May, but gardeners don’t dare plant until May 20th. This year Santa brought me grow lights and I am BEYOND excited, I’ve been stalking the UPS tracking website, *hopping up and down*, it should be here any day!!
What I Plan to Transplant Outside this Month:
Does snow count? Earlier in the fall I enriched my soil with horse manure, leaves and chicken poo. So for now, I gaze upon my snowy heaps and dream of the lush soil I’ll have come May! And of course, begin sketching out my garden plan.
What I plan to Harvest This Month:
Eggs. My four girls are still pumpin’ out 2-3 eggs a day. We have four cold-hardy, good laying hens that we got last April. Two are Rhode Island Reds (Agnus and RoadRunner) and two are Black Sexlinks (Mr. Bubblesworth and Goldfinger). In the summer four eggs a day is enough for a dozen eggs for us and we sell the other dozen to a family in town.
Our Meyer Lemon was brought inside in the fall and promptly produced 9 lemons! For some reason one little green lemon has gone into hybernation mode – it may or may not have something to do with the 68* house temp ;). I’ll be ordering citrus fertilizer this month to help it prepare for spring.
Weed and Pest Control:
Last year we had a substantial problem with CHIPMUNKS. And not the cute adorable kind. The vengeful, tomato scarfing kind. One of the good things about a long cold winter is that is arrests the insects and gives us gardeners time to study up on a solution!
The HH is really great about snow blowing paths all over the yard for me. One to the chicken coop :), one to the shed, and one whole track around the house so our two greyhounds can get a lap or two in on those cold, snowy days.
**These garden chores are based on my Zone 5b Southeast/Boston MA location. Find your garden zone HERE.
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