Observing hawks

We first spotted the nest two weeks ago, and the red-shouldered hawk pair finished it about a week later. Now, the female is sitting on the nest, keeping a careful eye on passersby, and calling with her distinctive kerr-kerr sound.

On the days I've been by, I've usually been able to catch a glimpse of her -- unfortunately, the nest is quite high up! I took a few pictures this morning with a long lens, but managed only to get a somewhat blurry shot in my minimal efforts.

In poking around the web looking for information about their nesting and foraging behavior, I came across a great digiscope sequence of a nesting red-shouldered mom and offspring in California.

A Growing Challenge

I was reminded about A Growing Challenge recently -- what a great incentive to add new edibles to your garden. I just 'stuck' onion plants in the satellite garden - Stockton Red, Walla Walla Sweet, and another sweet onion. These were new to me - I grew onions last year for the first time, and surprised kids by pulling up lovely large red onions from the raised beds at the garden. What fun! Unfortunately, the woodchuck population is growing there, too, and the den below the former camellia greenhouse has been more than active. Hhrmph. At least they don't like onions!

And my potatoes hopefully will produce well in their nicely amended beds in the satellite garden. King Harry, supposedly pest-resistant, Canola Red, a favorite of home growers, All-Blue, just for fun, Red Dale, and Caribe were my selections this year.

I've sown a flat of Red Deer Tongue lettuce from Nichols Garden Nursery, and have lots more seeds to sow outside. My 'Spigarello' broccoli seedlings are doing well, although I'm sure they won't produce too much by the time hot weather arrives. But, they'll be tasty, nevertheless.

The corn salad (mache) in my old cold frame (I haven't had time to assemble my new one yet), has finally germinated, and hopefully will produce some excellent leaves before the heat does them in, too.

This morning was a perfect whisper of spring, warm, humid, with rain in the forecast. Hooray. The leaves are starting to emerge on Itea virginica (Virginia sweetspire), creating a glow of green above the reddish stems. The first Oconee bell flower was spotted in the Garden. Definitely, spring is on the way.

Planting potatoes and onions

The weather was perfect this weekend, spring-like even though it's technically still winter. The potatoes had sprouted nicely and the onion plants were ready to plant, so I went to work in the satellite garden, where the onions and potatoes have space to grow, and won't tempt emerging local woodchucks.My inadvertent foraging preference experiments last year revealed that potatoes are not appealing to woodchucks, thank goodness, nor were garlic or onions, in preference to all of the kales, beans, melons, cucumbers, okra, etc. which s/he/they ate with relish, I presume, judging by the pitiful stems that were left.

(I do have a new supply of something called 'Chuckster' and a woodchuck lure to hopefully catch and relocate whomever is unwise enough to emerge to forage in MY vegetable garden; in spite of my love for wildlife gardening, I figure woodchucks need to be out eating grass shoots, not my vegetables.)
The garlic, shallot, and Welsh onion beds needed to be weeded in the tidying up process, and the potato and onion beds prepared. Some spading and turning over existing beds, adding mushroom compost and composted manure, and they were ready to plant.
In a couple of the potato beds, I'm trying a traditional trench method modified and described by Barbara Pleasant; create a 12 inch wide trench about 5 inches deep, put down about an inch of compost, then the sprouted potatoes, then mulch with a thick layer of straw. This helps keep the developing potatoes 'clean' -- similar to growing potatoes in hay bales. I don't mind, actually, poking around in my fluffy raised bed soil for potatoes, so I planted a couple of beds with amended soil covering the potatoes. I ordered a variety of seed potatoes from Wood Prairie Farm. There's something about about purple and yellow potatoes that's just plain appealing, reflecting their ancient Andean heritage, perhaps.