The tomato plants are starting to get big — still a few weeks before we can plant them outside, but we have plenty of healthy plants.
I had basically given up on the asparagus (they were older seeds), but I finally have five plants sprouted — this is part of my endeavor to get more plant once / harvest yearly stuff growing. 
And then there’s the chicken chow — this is Bocking 14 comfrey. It doesn’t go to seed, but provides a high-protein leafy food for chickens and turkeys.
We have tomato and pepper sprouts! Still waiting for the watermelons, though … I really hope we get to eat some fresh-from-the-vine watermelon this year.
Most of the tomatoes have sprouted, and two types of peppers. Peppers seem to take a long time to sprout! I’ve also got an arctic kiwi leafing out beautifully and several grape vines that are starting to sprout leaves.
We got some seeds started this evening — a lot of peppers, tomatoes, and a few other plants. There are a bunch of other peppers to get going, ground cherries, cucumbers, cauliflower, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. And, once we can start planting outside, corn, beans, peas, and all sorts of stuff for birds.
But here’s what I’ve got planted so far:
Hungarian peppers, Guadillo pepper, Pasilla pepper
Aji Lemon Drop pepper, Peri-Peri pepper, Sugar Rush Peach pepper
Black Strawberry Cherry Tomato, Brandywine Tomato, Trophy Tomato,
Rhubarb, Sugar Baby Bush Watermelon, Mary Washington Asparagus
I took the cart for a walk and dug up some of the really rich dirt from the forest floor … this will be our seed starting soil for the year.
I planted our garlic today — an assortment of varieties filling one of the raised beds.
I only added about an inch of mulch to the bed. The garlic I planted last year never formed heads — we had lots of green leaves, beautiful scapes that we harvested quickly … but no garlic bulbs! Evidently garlic cloves need exposure to cold temperatures in order to form bulbs. You can actually mulch them too well! Hopefully I’ve got enough mulch to suppress weeds and retain moisture but not so much mulch that the cloves are too toasty this winter. 
We picked a few ears of corn today — Hickory King fresh from the stalk:
It finally cooled down enough for the tomatoes to start ripening …
I knew the garden was growing well — there are tons of bean flowers, cucumber flowers, and tomato flowers. The buckwheat has sprouted, some of the corn is about a foot high. But it’s really cool to see a few veggies forming!
We tightened down all of the connections, stretched the plastic over the top, and tied it down.
Now we have a 26′ greenhouse ready to grow lettuce and house the tiny bird tractor.
