Well how is everyone doing on this lovely Friday? We’ve had quite a cloudy and rainy week here in Ashland and it’s brought us numerous sprouts and slugs (see below), but this weekend is supposed to be sunny and warm – I can’t wait! I know that we need the rain and I appreciate any and all that we get, but I’m ready for summer!

Most of the seeds that I planted are sprouting even with the lack of sun, with the arugula being the frontrunner like usual.

Gotta love those brassicas! We also planted chard, turnips, beets, broccoli, carrots, kale and several varieties of lettuce. We also got a few tomato and pepper starts in, as well as a tomatillo. Seed potatoes are cut and drying and will be planted in a day or two. A few more herbs starts were planted as well, because I aim to grow every fresh herb known to man (and woman). Here is parsley and cilantro.

And basil. I planted more basil seeds around the plant, we’ll see if they come up.

And we also planted a dill start, which we recently noticed was being ravaged by slugs! Apparently slugs love dill, because they were barely on any of my other plants. So, we did the only thing we could think of and bought a 40 of Pabst.

No, not for human consumption, but for the slugs! Sorry, but we like good beer, preferably home brew. I know, it’s not the likely garden helper, but you want to use cheap beer to attract them. Put out a shallow dish of beer and in no time all the slugs will want to join the party! This is what it looked like after only a couple of hours.

Then the next day we had tons of slugs dead by drunkenness and none on the dill plant. Score!

I know it’s a bit morbid to get excited by dead slugs, but I think I may have cackled a bit when I saw this! It’s so great when you can come up with a natural solution to a problem in the garden. If we had our own property we would have ducks and they would keep the slug population under control, but we have to work with what we have right now. And a 40 of Pabst did the trick nicely! Live long and prosper, little dill plant, for we have saved you from the slugs!

Ok, lets move on to something pretty, shall we? Another exciting thing that we didn’t plant but we get to reap the benefit from is roses. There are multiple beautiful rose bushes in the back of our raised beds and they have been flowering like crazy the past few weeks.

So gorgeous, and every one seems to be a different color. Oh, and I have to give you a raspberry update! This is literally the most exciting thing in my life right now, waiting for these raspberries. Be prepared for weekly updates on this one! The berries are now forming and it thrills me to death!

One more last spring project that we had to get done before it was too late is picking a big bunch of dandelions. Can you guess what for? Dandelion wine, of course! They are now picked and making the wine is one project we have lined up for this weekend. Stay tuned for the recipe!

I think that’s about it for this week. Except for… oh yeah, I got a job! Even though I wish I could be a full time blogger, it was time for me to get a real job. I now work at the Ashland Food Co-op which is about as cool a job for a natural foods lover like me as one can get. I am really hoping to be able to continue with the blog with the same frequency of posting as I have been, but we’ll see how it goes. As of right now I have a lot of awesome things lined up for you guys, so I don’t think it will be a problem. Everything I show you here is my passion!

Hope you all have a lovely holiday weekend!