Well, if today isn’t an auspicious date to begin this year’s SoS posts, I don’t know when is. Being mostly a garden blog, I went dormant last December when the polar nights of Finnish winter made it pretty much impossible to do anything else. I’d meant to start back up earlier when I started sowing vegetables in the snow in April, but various other spring projects (like participating in an amateur theater production) ended up taking precedence. Here we are at that perfect moment of late spring/early summer, though, when everything is fresh and growing, and I just have to share it with my fellow gardeners!
1. I am excited to announce that this is the first year I have been able to harvest from our asparagus bed. Both ‘Gijnlim’ from store-bought roots and ‘Mary Washington’ grown from seed are in this bed, so I have no way of telling which is which at this point. I only took the first four fat spears to pop up (sauteed in lemon and butter, served over toast), but am delighted to know that there will be a much larger harvest next spring. Perhaps even enough to share with the rest of the family…
2. The apple trees are in blossom! As are the plums and pears, but the apples are the biggest and most floriferous by far. The garden smells amazing right now. That’s the ‘White Transparent’, our oldest apple tree, in the photo. I love how the entire tree sounds like it’s buzzing, from all the insects gorging themselves on nectar. Hopefully, this will shape up to be a good year for fruit, since the usually fickle May weather has been warm and calm enough to keep them on the trees for a long time.
3. Forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica)! Not to be confused with blue-eyed Mary, which we have plenty of. These were winter sown in early 2023, then transplanted out to the flower field that spring, where they sat forgotten for a year. I didn’t realize that they were biennials so was puzzled as to why they never flowered. Well, they most definitely made up for it this year. They all opened overnight early this week and now there’s this pretty haze of light blue amongst the tulips that is very noticeable even from the road. I hope that they self-seed, so I won’t have to wait two years between flowers in the future.
4. First stinging nettle harvest. I used these youngest leaves to make a lovely cream soup with the last of our homegrown onions, parsley root and potatoes. As the plants grow, I snip off leaves every morning to mix with other fresh herbs for a pot of tea. It really helps my asthma and allergies!
5. Cheating a little, because I couldn’t resist putting in some photos from earlier this month when all the spring bulbs started popping up in the flower field. This was one of my major reasons for having a dedicated flower field in the first place. I only put in varieties that can naturalize, so they will hopefully spread and return for a bigger display next year.
6. The vegetable garden is 90% planted and sprouted. It should’ve been done by now, but the high temperatures burned up two beds worth of baby Chinese greens. They shall be replanted this weekend with the addition of sun protection tunnels.
Thanks for visiting and please do check out what the other SoSers are doing over at Jim’s page!
Little Blue and White House 
Welcome back! It all looks lovely – especially the apple blossom. That’s interesting regarding the nettles helping with allergies. I wonder if nettle tea helps with hay fever? I’ll have to look it up later.
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Nettle tea does indeed help with hay fever! I’m horribly allergic to hay and grass, as well as pollen, dust and cats. It seems to help with a whole host of histamine-related issues. I like putting it, either fresh or dried, into all sorts of tea blends because there’s never a time of year when I couldn’t use a boost in that area.
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Happy to see you back! I see that you have apple blossoms and tulips which have already disappeared in our gardens for a long time: spring/summer has therefore arrived at your home too. I saw on the maps that the Nordic countries have a very beautiful spring, with nice warmth at the moment, which is not the case in France. So enjoy !Bravo for the nettle soup: it’s excellent.
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Spring was surprisingly warm, to the point where a lot of us were confused how we managed to switch straight from winter to summer! If it makes you feel any better, we went back to rainy and low 20s as of last week as well 😀 It’s actually something of a relief, because we had a horrible drought last June and it set back many of my plants when they should have been sprouting.
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It is always so comforting that the pollinators appear just at the right moment.
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Very much so! It’s encouraging enough that I’m going to try out some new trees (peaches!!!) next year with the hope that we’ll have enough early pollinators to make it work. I’ve heard of enough people around here having decent results that it seems more than a fluke…
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Welcome back to the world of garden blogging! Congratulations on your first asparagus harvest. That a soup made with stinging nettle helps with asthma and allergies is interesting and has given me food for thought (no pun intended).
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Thank you! Seeing familiar faces after a long bout of hibernation is a bit like seeing your favorite perennials in spring 😀 I love being able to see another round of everyone’s gardens. The nettle soup was mostly a spring tonic sort of meal — not so much for the allergies as for getting some vitamins into the system. The herbal teas are what really seem to work for my asthma and allergies, usually when taken on a regular basis.
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Welcome back love! Your garden looks amazing as usual. Gosh that asparagus looks sumptuous! Love your naturalised bulbs! Yes, I found out forget Me nots were biennial too by mistake! 😘💞🌸🌼 I will have to plant them again!
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Hello! Thank you, and so glad to see you. Good to hear I’m not the only one who missed that little bit of information, lol. Yours didn’t self-seed, then? I’m thinking now that maybe if I sow some this year, as well as letting others go to seed, I might be able to reach a point where there will always be some every year? I suppose time will tell…
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Great to see you again, I was thinking about you last week actually and thinking we hadn’t seen you for a while! The apple tree looks beautiful, indeed everything is looking good! How long ago did you put your asparagus in? I am keen to focus more on growing veg that is expensive or hard to find in shops, and I’ve been considering putting in an asparagus bed as it is one of my favourite vegetables, though previous attempts to grow it on our old allotment were dismal thanks to the dreaded beetle…
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It’s been so nice to see what everybody’s been up to again! I planted a bagful of crowns three years ago, and sprinkled in a packet of seed two years ago. They both established and sprouted spindly stems for the past few years. This is the first year I’ve gotten a handful of decently-sized stems, which seems about on track. I’m guessing the ones I harvested have to be from the crowns, with that timeline. They were a bit more of an investment, which is why we didn’t get a huge number of them — just enough to have an earlier harvest and keep things fun while we wait for the rest to mature. I planted them for the same reasons you’ve mentioned, and also because there’s something awesome about low-maintenance perennial veg that just keeps on giving. We haven’t had any signs of pests yet, but I’ve got a large bottle of neem oil on hand, just in case.
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Hello Angela! Lovely to see you back, and to have a glimpse of your spring garden. Beautiful blossom and I love the tulip field! Your vegetable garden is also very impressive. I am pretty sure your forget-me-nots will come back for years to come if mine are anything to go by! (And they will spread! LOL!) Hope your asparagus grows nicely too. 😃
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Hi Cathy! Happy to see so many familiar faces 😀 I am rather excited about the vegetables this year, too — having been able to use so much of our own stored food this past winter has made me more ambitious as to what we can manage for next winter. I hope you’re right about the forget-me-nots! I do love how well they complement the bigger flowers, and they’re planted where I don’t mind them spreading.
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