Fickle Spring

Snow on the ground this morning prevents me from preparing a place in the garden for my seed potatoes.

The unplanted part of my garden, I covered with black plastic after I tilled it in February when Mother Nature treated us to about three weeks of dry, spring-like days. So even though all the precipitation we had this week has left the ground squishy and my shoes pick up mud just walking through the lawn, I need only one dry day I to uncover part of the garden and prepare the potato beds.

That includes measuring and marking the rows, and digging shallow trenches for the seed potatoes. As the plants grow, the soil that was removed to form the trenches, I’ll use to “hill up” around the potatoes to protect the tubers from sunlight and give them more (vertical) growing space.



The sun peeked out for a bit and I hoped the afternoon might dry out, but it’s raining again now. A good day to bake bread, I thought. I want to try “catching” wild yeast and using it to bake 100% whole grain bread. TNFarmgirl tells how to do it, but she says Summer and Fall are the best times to catch wild yeast. I likely would have no success on this rainy-snowy day, so I’ll save that project for summer.

TNFarmgirl also had a recipe for Fluffy Whole Wheat Bread which I’ll try instead. Her recipe makes four loaves. I think I'll cut it down to a quarter, and try just one loaf. She's feeding five guys; I'm not.