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April Showers Bring May Flowers!
I planted some quince last year and it has just bloomed
We have a few flowers blooming right now, and lots and lots of showers. I have been sick, so I am going a bit stir crazy and not much is getting done. I am just itching to get outside and get started on our spring to do list! It is miles and miles long. Here are a few of our pretty blooms right now:
This camellia has never had so many blooms before! It is putting on quite a show this year.
The hyacinth is also in bloom
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April Homestead To Do List for Gardening:
As always, our to do list is ginormous. Especially in the spring. Let's start with our little seedlings. I have 8 trays (36 plants each.....gulp) of peppers and tomatoes, that need transplanting, or up potting into larger pots. A lot of those will be sold at the end of the month (see how I Make Money Selling Plants). But for the ones I am keeping, I have to wash and sanitize 100+ large pots to prepare for their final transplant.
The greenhouse also needs a final cleaning before I move everything out there later this month. There is still quite a bit of veggie garden winter clean up to do and a few more kale and broccoli transplants to put in since the rabbits nibbled down the one's I planted previously.
I sprayed the rest with deer and rabbit spray, and they seem to be leaving it alone now. Don't forget to start working on controlling your slug and snail population now, or they will decimate your garden!
We may also have to replant more peas, at last look, I didn't see any coming up yet. The fava beans and kohlrabi and some swiss chard I planted by seed has all germinated.
I need to put a bunch of compost down and need to plant my beets and carrots and transplant all my onion seedlings.. And start some lettuce and spinach. And put more mulch down in lots of places as well as compost.
Egads, that's just the vegetable gardens! Lots of winter cleanup needs to occur in all the flower beds as well. This entails weeding, cutting back old growth, transplanting some things, and mulching. And we are still putting down wood chips in the apple orchard and several other places. The pile never seems to get smaller!
These are the fava beans, also called broad beans, finally peeking out. These make a wonderful hummus!
The garlic planted last fall is up and looking good
April Homestead To Do List for the Animals:
One of our pretty Blue Laced Red Wyandotte hens posing for the camera
One of our Pygmy goat girls looking for some treats
We still have not tackled the electric fence project for the two chickens compounds. My wonderful hubby is off next week, so hopefully after a quick camping trip, that can be his project for the rest of his time off.
We still have quite a few coops to get cleaned out, but we are getting there. I need to pull out the incubators after camping because when we get back, we will start collecting hatching eggs. We definitely want to hatch more Blue Laced Red Wyandottes, Blue Ameraucanas, Olive Eggers and maybe a few Marans and bantam Faverolles. Or maybe we will just fire up both incubators at the same time and just do one large hatch this year instead of staggering them.
See my tips on chicken keeping with Chickens for Beginners and Chicken Breeds for Colorful Eggs. With animals, also come rats, so see How I Get Rid of Rats on the Homestead.
April Homestead To Do List for Food Preservation:
I was a slacker here and still haven't got my tomatoes and berries pulled out of the freezer and canned up. I think I will leave it at those two things for this month. Although I will have to do more beans soon. Maybe I will have a canning marathon one of these rainy weekends! See all my articles on Food Preservation.
The April Homesteading To Do List
Check out our homestead to do lists here:
Time Management on the Homestead
March Homestead To Do List
May Homestead To Do List
June Homestead To Do List
Fall Homestead To Do List
I hope you all get some good weather soon and can hit your own to do lists hard! It's that time of year, where there is so much to do, I'm never quite sure where to start! Let me know what you are working on this month!
