The Old Guy's Garden Record

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Saturday, April 4, 2026

We have a rainy day today, so I decided to make Vienna bread. With the oven on (at 250°F) to help the dough rise, I kept the kitchen door open to help cool the kitchen. Outdoor temperatures ran around 70. And while still windy out, wind speeds topped out around 15 MPH, a far cry from yesterday’s 30-40 MPH winds.

I basically use our Grandma's Yeast Rolls recipe for the bread with a few modifications. I use milk instead of water, add some melted butter, extra sugar, and give it about 1 1/2 times the dry yeast called for in the roll recipe.

The bread with some real butter was delicious. My wife who doesn't really like salty stuff suggested a bit more salt in the dough! I'll probably add a Vienna bread recipe to our recipes page. But first, I'll need to make another loaf of it, this time carefully recording how much of what went into it.

And BTW: The new long bread baking pan (13x5" interior) proved to be just as no-stick as advertised. Of course, I'd sprayed it down with baking spray.

Friday, April 3, 2026 - Good Friday

I’d hoped to till our main bed and plant peas yesterday. But we had thirty MPH winds gusting to forty or so all day.

Then, it rained a bit overnight. I found our main bed too wet to rototill this afternoon. But I also checked our asparagus beds. Both patches had spears up. Bonnie's Asparagus Patch was easy to pick, as I’d mowed down its old growth a week ago. Our raised asparagus bed was another matter. I hadn’t yet cleared it, so I had to pick through old growth.

But I got a lot of asparagus spears, especially for a first picking. We’ll have fresh asparagus with our supper tonight. The excess spears got blanched and frozen.

All four of our apple trees are in full bloom and in need of their first spray. We have a Yellow Delicious, two Stayman Winesaps, and a volunteer tree off the edge of our property where we used to dump cull apples. The volunteer tree occasionally produces small, delicious, red apples and helps with pollination.

Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Today's gardening job was supposed to be tilling our main raised bed and planting peas. Rain was predicted, but the morning was supposed to be clear. Unfortunately, I slept in until 11! But the rain so far today has been light, so I may yet get some gardening done later this week.

Instead of doing anything worthwhile, I watched a bunch of the Artemis II prep on Amazon Prime.

And of course, today is April Fools' Day and the beginning of Passover.

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