Currently enjoying a salad of overwintered kale and cabbage, beet greens from thinning the sprouts, a couple radishes, and snap peas, with sunflower seeds and fresh dill sprinkled on top. I just added grocery store cucumber and bell pepper, because I was behind on planting those. This is what we do it for!

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I recently visited The Garden In the Woods, near Framingham, MA - it’s a combination botanical garden and native plant store. Wonderful place, I highly recommend it to anyone in the area. I came home with a Serviceberry bush that I planted where one of the hedge/tree conifer things on the edge of my yard had died.

In the annual garden my flour corn is coming up - planted it a bit late, so hopefully it’ll have enough time. I’m a little behind on everything except the peas this year, tbh, but it’s nice to see things finally start to take off.

Fruits of my seed starting labors, some farther along than others. The big squash was a volunteer from the compost, not sure yet if it’s a butternut or a pumpkin. Also featuring some peas in the background that I really need to trellis

Last year’s kale is starting to flower - the seed I saved from the year before is growing well so I’m excited to collect more.

Bonus double rainbow from the storms we had earlier this week. Weather is beautiful now, I like the May-June time of year.

The ornamental cherry is in full bloom, which is lovely! Yesterday afternoon we slapped together a trellis for some of the peas with some reclaimed building materials. Last weekend I planted out my two blueberry bushes, which are just starting to break dormancy.

This weekend’s task will be to thin the masses of volunteer tomato seedlings that have popped up, and maybe transplant some of the more intentionally grown ones!

I have two yards of topsoil/compost blend arriving this week, at which point I can plant eldest sister corn in the new beds!

I don’t have any of those species, but I do have a lot of invasive alder buckthorn (frangula alnus) which I’m cutting out and could use for mulch. Tempted to keep one or two around to coppice for trellis material or firewood/kindling since it seems to grow back pretty well.

Buckwheat and field peas are my current fall cover crop plans for later this year.

So many peas! I’m excited, I love snap peas. My hope is to succession plant them on the same trellis as my tomatoes and cucumber, we’ll see if they have enough of a head start for that to work out. Last year’s kale is also killin’ it out there, making the most of the time before the cabbage moths show up

My seed starting is not going quite as well as I’d like, only two cucumber coming up so far of the 10 or so I wanted. No peppers yet either, though that was old seed. Tomatoes are doing decently well, and I’ve got plenty of backups in the multitude of seedlings that have spring up outside where fruit fell off the vine last year!

I’m worried about the apples I planted around this time last year. They haven’t showed signs of leafing out yet, though I did have to cut a couple of suckers off the base of one. I might not have babied them enough last summer, and they did get some involuntary pruning by the deer.

On the bright side, I just received my blueberry bushes! Planning to plant them out this weekend, just gotta figure out where… Any tips on high-bush blueberry care would be much appreciated!

Thanks for the detailed response!

Did your Honeycrisp survive?

Neither of my apples have leafed out yet, which has me a little worried - though the Baldwin put out a sucker below the graft which I cut off.

Do you have purslane (Portulaca oleracea) there?

I actually do have a couple of (non-native) purslane species in the yard - I hadn’t thought about using them as a living mulch, but I like the idea. One of them has gorgeous flowers.

Do you compost your poop?

Not something I feel comfortable I could do safely, unfortunately. Especially since my house is in a saddle curve where a lot of storm water flows through into some wetlands conservation land. I’d be worried about runoff. Also not sure how my town would feel about it!

So you cover the surface of your garden beds with compost?

That’s the plan! I’d also like to do some cover crops and chop-and-drop this fall for mulch.

Also just getting started! The only edible fruiting plant when I moved here in 2023 was a black raspberry bush. A year ago I added two apple trees (though the honey crisp may not have survived the winter, we’ll see). I had a very successful annual garden last year, hoping to continue that this coming season and try out the three sisters companion planting method.

For perennials, this year I’ll be adding two blueberry bushes, inoculating some logs with shiitake and oyster mushroom spawn, and encouraging some volunteer black raspberries that have popped up elsewhere.

Pruning hasn’t been an issue yet, but I will need to more actively manage the raspberries this year.

In the future I’m hoping to add lots more edible native shrubs, and maybe more trees if I can find good spots for them.

I’m in the northeast woodlands bioregion of the US, zone 5. I have two compost bins going with leaves, grass clippings, shredded paper/cardboard and kitchen scraps. Last year one bin produced enough to cover about one and a half of my 4x8 ft garden beds. I’m planning to order a cubic yard or two from a local business again this year to top up the annual garden. I don’t really expect to get fully self sufficient on compost anytime soon, but I’ll keep producing as much as I’m able.