The weather was excellent this past weekend in Philly. It was about 65 degrees on both Saturday and Sunday. So I took the opportunity to start getting the garden ready for spring. I didn't get any pictures (the memory card was MIA...) but I'll start taking some soon.

My first task was to start cleaning out the flower/plant bed that is at the foot of our front porch. The broom bush had fallen over during the winter and was blocking our pathway, so I picked up some sturdy plant steaks and got it back into a vertical position. I also cleaned out the bed removing old leaves and trash. Most of the plants seem to be coming back. The butterfly bush, rose, hyacinths, bee balm, lilys, and juniper are all starting to come back nicely. Unfortunately so is the gout weed.

I have made it my goal to get rid of the gout weed in this bed this year. Last year I mostly conquered the gout weed that was growing in the front yard. I am noticing a little bit of that coming back but not too much yet. Anyway, I'll need to carefully use the weed killer in this bed because the gout weed is all over in between the other plants. I'll probably end up using a paint brush to just get the gout weed. Again, this weed killer is the only non-organic thing I have used in my garden (sorry!), only because there is no other way to kill the gout weed. I have tried pulling it and using organic treatments past years but nothing had worked and the gout weed was winning the battle. This weed killer worked well last year, so hopefully I'll be able to get rid of the gout weed completely(?) this year.

Besides working on the front bed I also did a little bit of work in the back yard vegetable garden. I removed a wheelbarrow's worth of dirt from the bed in the back of the yard which hosted the potatoes last year (thus the reason for the extra dirt). I then added some manure, fertilizer, and peat-moss and started to plant some seeds! I planted my spinach (spalding), lettuce (romain, mesculin, arugula), and even some carrot seeds. I have covered the whole bed with a protective cover to keep out the frost (and neighborhood cats!).

This is the earliest I have ever planted seeds outside so it will be interesting to see how it goes. The spinach says that it can be planted 2.5 months before the last frost, and lettuce likes to be chilly as well. I'm not too sure about the carrots, but I'll see. I also need to get some cabbage seeds (the one thing I forgot to order this year) and plant some cabbage soon, along with some peas.

I also started planting some seeds indoors. I only planted some basil (large lettuce leaf) seeds so far, but I'll start planting my peppers soon as well. I won't start the tomatoes for a few weeks yet - otherwise they get too large by the time I can plant them.

I can't wait for my first garden salad!