Its mid April here on the "rental" homestead in Southern Oregon and its feeling a bit like the calm before the storm, knowing how much work lies in the coming months when the weather heats up.

Despite patiently waiting for the soil to warm up and dry out this month has already seen a lot of work, planting, planning and preparation for the rest of the coming season.

Although now does feel like I am in the storm literally as I am taking some extra downtime to write this post during a brisk windswept, rainy stormy day. Last night it snowed again and there was still some on the ground but it melted quite quickly.

You can see the mountains just higher than the homestead here is speckle with snow.

Being new to town the locals tell me that it's not common to get snow quite this late here but on the other hand it can snow into May. End of May into June will be a really busy time for the garden as beds are prepped and a massive amount of planting is planned.

Unfortunately waiting for the soil to dry out is proving very difficult.

I would love to be prepping new garden beds right now but the soil in much of the garden is quite soggy being that the soil is heavy clay.

Even still I am so grateful for the garden space and good soil and it is just a matter of time before those new beds will be prepped. In the meantime there are plenty of beds that were used in recent years and did not need much work for planting. With just some minor weeding several beds were ready to seed.

We've seen a lot of growth from our garlic planting last month which went into the ground right after moving in.

It was up in less than a week and growing vigorously since then.

Not bad for a March planting!

I've been adding a few layers of clipped grass as mulch to the garlic as the previous layer dries out.

Nearby Favas are starting to come up.

Once they emerge boy do they start getting big fast! We planted 6 varieties of favas. Four in march and another two varieties acquired from a local seed vendor last week.

Planting fava seeds (and many other plants) can often be as simple as scratching some crude lines in the ground with a shovel, stick, finger whatever you can find.

We just dropped them in! It's so easy and quick.

In this case all we did was pull out some of the bigger weeds from a previously used garden bed.

The soil is so wet and especially being a clay soil we don't want to work it right now.

The first round of peas are up and getting ready to climb!

I am imagining some pea shoots in my meals soon :)

Here are the peas are being planted.

Easy as sticking them in the ground with an eager finger :)

One minor bummer was that some of the seeds I saved had been infested with pea weavels that bored into the dried peas.

(I saved two kinds indiscriminately in the same bag in case you were wondering) Luckily they didn't eat them all and we also had more sources of peas in other envelopes that weren't affected.. plenty to be planted. Hopefully they aren't lurking around this garden.

Onion sets are springing into action.

Interesting thing about these onion sets is that they were a year and a half old grown in 2016 for 2017 planting.

I received them from a seed swap and kept them in a cool place. Most of them were all but dried out but what the heck.. in the ground!

We used a method we have preferred in the past. Lay out the onion sets on the ground with spacing we are happy with and then dig them all into place.

They came up and looked a little languished for a week or so but it seems once the roots got going they are looking quite healthy.

There are more little tiny sprouts that were direct seeded like kale, bok choy, onions, cabbage coming up and slowly starting to grow.

There is quite a bit of growth in the greenhouse beginning to fill in the wooden flats that we started seeding last month.

To be honest we have been making seeding new flats nearly every week for about a month now.

17 of our 19 wooden flats are now planted. Soon we'll be dipping into plastic trays and pots as needed... there won't be time to build more wooden trays this season!

Some of the denser plantings are already in need of thinning and/or up potting.

Here is @idyllwild pricking out poppies and up potting them into new flats with more space to grow out.

Here they are pricked out and trayed up where they will live until ready to go out in the garden :)

It's been really interesting to see that so many seeds have germinated above and beyond my expectations - despite many of the seeds were quite old.

Most of the older seeds fall into the 2013-2015 range, some are older and even less effort or expectation was put into them.

I am thrilled that while the germination rate is lower than new seeds there are a fair amount of peppers coming up which were mostly saved between 2012-14.

This saved me from having to buy many new peppers this year (though I did end up later getting a few more anyway - hard to resist). This flat has been sitting on a heat mat for almost a month but I did just move it off to make way for a new flat of (very) late tomatoes and into a warmer zone in the greenhouse.

There are similar results in germination with the tomato seeds. All but two of these rows are older seeds.

The Flat with leeks, bok choy and onions will be the first to be planted out in the garden and that time is not too far off now.

Unfortunately we have had some damping off which has mostly affected the leeks, onions and poppies with smaller finer stems.

We are cutting back on our watering and using some EM spray to reduce the fungus, which seems to be working nicely.

The yarrow, chamomile and hopi tobacco came up so well they could have been direct seeded outside.

But given the soil conditions I am still glad that we seeded in flats so that they can be growing up while we are waiting for the soil to dry out.

Yarrow is a common native around here, but still it will be nice to have some in the garden that we can pamper, dry and save seeds from.

This is one I am really excited to be growing for the first time. Cumin! My favorite spice. It came up quickly.

Pruning the fruit trees has been a project.

There are about a dozen or so fruit trees as well as some oaks and various shrubs that were in bad need of pruning.

We got to them just in time as they were just starting to leaf and bud out. This was one of the first to be pruned and now it is in full flower mode.

This method of caging trees is a convenient way to keep deer from browsing the trees while not having to commit to fencing an entire area off.

I recently burned several blackberry (and rose) patches that need to get cleared out.

They were a dried up mass of old canes and pretty much looked like this before hand.

Lots of dead brush makes it hard to get in there and is also fuel especially in the drier months. Now it's going to be easier to trim and pull out the blackberry canes. Its incredible how fast the grass is growing back and thriving after the burn.

I went back to the burnt patches a few days later before some rain and threw out some flower and herb seeds, which I had a lot of extra. Maybe some will fill in the space!

I felt comfortable with the burn because I had plenty of water available at my finger tips to put it out and stop it from spreading and there was nothing flammable next to the pile.

Please be responsible if you are going to use fire as a tool. This stuff goes up FAST and STRONG and if there is more fuel nearby (brush, trees, fence posts, structures) it can get out of hand fast, even in the colder wetter season (which should be the only time you're burning). Ask me how I know.

I also recently learned that you can use a choker cable and a truck to pull out a whole blackberry patch like this, roots and all.

I've also been busy piling slash piles from various clearings thinnings and prunings.

The temporary impromptu tree nursery space is starting to get cramped.

I am holding seeds in pots here.

And here are our cuttings and grafts.

The number of pots is quickly outgrowing the space we are using and soon it will expand even more rapidly.

Soon I will be setting up a dedicated space for a tree nursery.

I have a few spots in mind that should work. I'll keep you posted as that happens.

Building compost piles is an ongoing process!

Food processing for the season has already started with drying excess mushrooms from some of the recent mushroom harvests!

I am excited because this is the first time I've harvested enough mushrooms to dry some for using in the kitchen when fresh mushrooms are not available. Here are some dried Yellowfoot mushooms.

Thanks for joining me for this homestead update. There is a lot in the works and I am excited to share progress with you as the season progresses :)

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Who is @sagescrub?

I am a ex-suburbanite turned permaculture homesteader. Follow my journey and I will share what I know and am learning along the way. You can learn more about me in my re-introducing @sagescrub post. Wishing you abundance in your life!

Know that I am likely NOT an expert on the subjects I present. Please do your own research and be your own expert!

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