A Common Life
Welcome to A Common Life where Morgan and Taylor offer month-by-month gardening advice to help your garden thrive. We also share our personal journey in seasonal living, aiming to foster a deeper connection with others, nature, and our Creator. Our hope is to encourage and equip others who are on a similar journey and to provide a space for community around these ideals.
A Common Life
Looking ahead to March: A Special Guest, Traumatic Wildflower Experience, Morel Season!
Here is what JenkinsAI had to say about the pod:
"As the frost of winter thaws and the first green shoots emerge, March ushers in a symphony of growth in our gardens, and we're here to share it all with you. With the help of our special guest, the ever-curious Virginia, we unwrap the exuberance of spring gardening, from the thrill of getting dirt under our nails to the enchantment of nurturing plants with beneficial microbes. Virginia’s youthful zeal reminds us how wonder-filled the world can be through the eyes of a child. We discuss the perfect timing for planting an array of crops, including the elusive cilantro, the sweet strawberries, and the cherished perennial asparagus. Tune in for a dose of wisdom from local gardening maestros as we navigate the cilantro conundrum and celebrate the seeds we're planting this season, like carrots, kale, and radishes, to name a few.
Our latest episode also recounts a family adventure that offers a poignant lesson about the unpredictability of the great outdoors. We share the laughter—and the lessons learned—from a creek crossing escapade that went sideways, reminding us all to respect Mother Nature's capricious moods. Embrace the anticipation of early spring foraging and the cherished family bonds forged in the wild. Join us as we delve into the practicalities of gardening, exploring how soil temperatures and regional climates cue the arrival of our favorite spring plants. We're buzzing with excitement for the gardening season ahead, and we can't wait to bring you along on this verdant journey. So, lace up your boots, grab your trowel, and prepare for a celebration of spring's awakening with us."
Whew, Exciting Stuff! :)
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Music on the podcast was composed by Kevin Dailey. The artist is Garden Friend. The track is the instrumental version of “On a Cloud”
Hey everybody, welcome to a Common Life podcast. I am your host, taylor, and I'm here with my beautiful bride Morgan.
Morgan Myers:Hey everyone.
Taylor Myers:We have missed you. I am so glad you're back here with me and this is a special episode because we have a special guest with her with us here. Yes, we do and her name is Virginia. Hi, virginia is our oldest, she is our daughter and she wanted to hop on the podcast and so I said, sure. So why don't you tell these fine people something about yourself?
Morgan Myers:I like to help dad in the garden.
Taylor Myers:You do. So one of the things we talk about sometimes is how I can be kind of particular about the garden.
Morgan Myers:Oh, I thought you were going to say about the mic.
Taylor Myers:Oh, I can be particular about the mic too, but I can be kind of particular about the garden. Do you really like helping me in the garden? Yes, what do you like about being in the garden and helping?
Morgan Myers:me, I like to be with you and I like to dig my feet down in the dirt, because it feels really good.
Taylor Myers:So you like to do it barefoot.
Morgan Myers:Yes.
Taylor Myers:Yeah, that is really nice and I like to learn from you. You do. What have you learned from me?
Morgan Myers:I have learned that you put e-spray like worm poop on the plants with molasses and it helps the microbes eat the plants, so you can garden more.
Taylor Myers:Okay, I will pat myself on the back here. So the microbes don't eat the plants, but you do feed the microbes and then the microbes, they basically poop out good stuff that the plants can eat, that the plants take up. It's kind of like in our digestive system we have microbes in our stomach that whenever we eat something they break it down and then our body can absorb it. Same thing in the soil.
Morgan Myers:But Virginia, that was very impressive, that was very impressive.
Taylor Myers:Yes, that was totally all on the spot. So is there anything else you want to say? No, okay? Well, thanks for joining us for a little bit. Virginia. Well, in this episode we're gonna be talking about March and the fun stuff we have coming up. It's gonna be a fun filled month. We have a lot of firsts happening and a lot going on in the garden. March and April are gonna be pretty busy, and then May we're gonna kind of start cruising a little bit, and then in June, again.
Taylor Myers:Yeah, it's gonna be like weed season in June, but March and April are some of the sweetest times in the garden.
Morgan Myers:I'm pumped. Okay, so last week, the week before, we went to a little garden club here in our town.
Taylor Myers:Yeah.
Morgan Myers:And that was really fun. But one of the things they asked us at the end was what do you have trouble growing or what's one of your biggest garden fails? And I said cilantro, because I feel like I can't grow cilantro. So I feel like that should be something we should be planting right now. For what they're saying, I don't know. That's what they made it sound like. They let that cilantro likes cold Colder more than the humid hot June.
Taylor Myers:Yeah, that makes sense.
Morgan Myers:We should be planting cilantro right now. Yeah, I want to do some cilantro.
Taylor Myers:That's why some people in our community I'm starting to encourage them to write in the common and to share some of the things they're interested and passionate about, because we definitely don't know everything Like, for instance, strawberries. We've never planted strawberries.
Morgan Myers:We don't know anything about growing strawberries. Really we don't know, no experience.
Taylor Myers:Yeah, I mean I could you know I've written a whole how-to. That's not quite on the website yet, but I had it up for our guides on our last website and you know. But I had to do all my research and read in my books and look up online to compile it all, but we've never done that. But I'm almost positive. March is when you should be planting your strawberries. If you're gonna, if you don't have any yet, now is the time to do it.
Morgan Myers:I'd like to do that, not this year.
Taylor Myers:Well, we actually have some out there that we got from a friend that we kind of just threw in the leaves. They're still cooking.
Morgan Myers:Oh good.
Taylor Myers:I know so we might have some strawberries. The other thing to do this month in March coming up is asparagus beds. Guys, I highly highly recommend doing some asparagus beds, because you put them in the ground and once you get them established, they keep coming back every year and they're gonna be one of the first vegetables to pop up by the ground. The kids will love them.
Morgan Myers:It's really fun, Fun.
Taylor Myers:they taste so good. It's such a unique taste and, yeah, I mean, you apply some fresh compost or like some fresh fertilizer every year and they're gonna keep coming back year after year after year. You'll harvest a few spears, let them turn into ferns, cut them down in the fall, start all over. It's really cool.
Morgan Myers:Yeah, they won't be getting any this year.
Taylor Myers:No, not if you plant this year, it really takes two to three years really. On the third year, I can go into detail. Well, I write from Jean Logston's book and give the description on how to do your asparagus beds in this newsletter. But oh, the tea.
Morgan Myers:That's my tea. Let me go grab it.
Taylor Myers:Okay, and we're back and we're back. So this month, if you wanna put in asparagus beds, now is the time to do it. I don't know of any local suppliers of asparagus roots. Usually you start with roots that are already like a year old. You might have to order those online, but we're also direct seeding a lot in the garden, so we're direct seeding carrots, swiss chards, collards, kale, kohlrabi, leaf lettuce, parsley beets, radishes, green onions and, Morgan says, cilantro.
Morgan Myers:Gonna give it a go.
Taylor Myers:And that's if you haven't already seeded some things indoors, like last month in February, we seeded tomatoes peppers basil and if you haven't already done that, jump on that this month.
Taylor Myers:Get those indoors. But you're direct seeding a lot in the garden this month as well and you're gonna be transplanting into the garden in March Early March, really late February, but early March. Your Head lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, kale Call a flower. So if you've seeded those already, they're ready to go into the garden, especially if they're big enough. Ours are big enough. We're gonna do that this upcoming week, last week of February, early March.
Morgan Myers:They're really big, they need to go in like today.
Taylor Myers:They look really good, yeah, so March is a great time to Oil your tools and make sure everything is. Morgan, smiling at me. I guess this is Funny, but yeah, if you haven't cleaned your equipment and stuff, you should do that. It's time to do it. It'd be probably the best to do it before you store them, so they're just ready to roll. But if you're like me and haven't done it, and if you're gonna do it, now's the time. So March is one of my favorite months of the year. Do you know why?
Morgan Myers:because of strawberries. Is that what you're gonna say?
Taylor Myers:because all right, let me ask you. So I Was questioning myself strawberries or like early April, late March?
Morgan Myers:Am I crazy and thinking that's I Feel like it's always sooner than I think, like I, you know, I'm on the gram and I'm like, oh, people are already out picking their strawberries.
Taylor Myers:Yeah, you know, I know, I know, I think it would be late March. If it's March, we should know this.
Morgan Myers:Yeah, since this is kind of like our thing, the.
Taylor Myers:So no, it's not why I march is my favorite.
Morgan Myers:Okay, March is your favorite because you get to see the first things butting out the blue bells and.
Taylor Myers:Morels. So March is a really cool time of the year because the trees haven't put out leaves yet, and so the sunlight in Forests sunlight will reach the, the ground, forest floor, yeah, and as things begin to warm up and days get longer and the sunlight hits the forest floor, you'll you'll get wildflowers. Now is the time to see wildflowers in the forest, and we have a really special spot that we go to that is an ephemeral and ephemeral is just a fancy word for meaning like it's a short, short period of time. It comes and goes really quick, but there's an ephemeral wildfire wildflower bloom that we go to. That is just spectacular and it happens every March and it's primarily Virginia blue bells, but that's one of my most favorite spots on earth and it happens in March. So I'm really looking forward to doing that again this year, hopefully this year without the trauma. Yeah, it was so bad guys last year. It was an amazing time. Morgan was like.
Taylor Myers:I was like nine months nine months pregnant, eight months for sure, yeah, cuz he was born in April and this was like a month before he was born. We have to cross a creek. I Ugh, it's terrible. We have to cross a creek to get to this spot and I had the whole family in this Ranger, like golf cart, like mobile. We crossed the creek, it was fine and I was super careful.
Taylor Myers:Well, you gave us a whole prep talk about Everything and I had already crossed it by myself like two days earlier. So in the creek wasn't any higher, so I knew the added weight. We were gonna get extra traction. Everything was fine, but still I was just like I got my whole family here. We're gonna be extra careful. I want to be a good example for the kids. I give them the prep talk. We load up, we cross the creek is perfect. We go over, we take pictures, we have our dog with us. It was just like the perfect, like Sunday afternoon, yeah, it's perfect. Well, coming out, we have to cross the creek again and and Coming from the other side of the creek, the bank is a little different. It's steep and it kind of goes directly into it and it's on the deeper side of the creek, so the other side that we enter. When the way we came into the creek it was at first the water was shallow, then it gets a little deep and then you kind of go up a bank.
Taylor Myers:Yeah well, coming out, you're going down a bank into the deepest part of the water and then you hit shallow Again. I'd already done it two days before. No problem, really no problem. You know the thing the golf cart gets traction, you're out, it's no problem. Well, I give the prep talk, we get in there and I Going, I'm going into the deep part of the water. So I gun it because I don't want to go in slowly, because I want to get through it. I gun it and I make it out, and Then the window and I did not.
Taylor Myers:But and wow, though, they did make it out of the golf cart Y'all. I pull out of the water and then I hear a scream, which is, I think, virginia that had was sitting in the front seat with me, turned around and was like mom and and Morgan and my son Wendell had fallen out the back seat that was facing out Into the freezing spring-fed water. Morgan was eight months pregnant.
Morgan Myers:It was so scary I might, my head was wet. I mean, I got Y'all all the way in.
Taylor Myers:I saw the your leg, the picture of your leg, because I was looking for some pictures of that trip to pay posts in the newsletter and your leg Y'all it was. It was terrifying Not knowing like are you okay? Is Wendell okay? It was our unborn baby, okay. It was terrifying. Praise God, everybody was okay. But I'll tell you what it's gonna be Very hard to get Wendell across that creek again.
Morgan Myers:I'm not gonna ride on the Ranger, I think I'll walk, I will. And what stinks, too, is we took all these amazing pictures and it was like the, you know, my big old pregnant belly and the kids, all smiling and happy. And now they all hate those pictures Because it reminds them of it.
Taylor Myers:I know when we have to go back and it's like my favorite thing it was. It was such a bummer how that happened.
Morgan Myers:And we had found some blood root and put it on our face, man it was the perfect afternoon.
Taylor Myers:Yeah, blood root is a good is amazing. We was so fun anyway, it could have been a lot worse, man. Yeah, so if you get a chance to go for some while, like, go through the woods in March, be looking for wildflowers Before the trees put on their leaves. Now it's the time this month in March it's the worm moon and and, yeah, it's it's the time when the earthworms are getting back active and the soil is coming alive and it's warming up, so it's called the worm man.
Taylor Myers:When does that happen? March 24th, which it's right now this year, 2024, primarily, the full moons are gonna be at the end of the month, and so we're recording this on the 25th. I'm not exactly sure when our full moon is, but it's pretty much full out there.
Morgan Myers:It's been well, dad said last night it was incredible yeah.
Taylor Myers:Also we had the spring equinox.
Taylor Myers:Yes in March, and that means the Sun is hitting the Earth right at the equator, almost perfectly dead on. So, from the North Pole to the South Pole, it's getting like equal light directly, and the Sun is moving up towards the North, so the Earth has tilted a certain way. Now, as we know, the days are getting longer and, being in the Northern Hemisphere, the Sun is rising in the sky, so it's hitting us right on the equator right now. Spring is upon us and calendar of firsts, like we have so many firsts, so many firsts.
Morgan Myers:I just walked around the block with Wilder and just like, yeah, tonight, and you know, just listening to the little birds and then seeing like the cherry blossoms and it's probably all going to get, you know killed by the frost, yeah, which is so sad, but it is nice, just. I mean I have never been more ready for things to come alive and sunshine and spring, I know.
Taylor Myers:Yeah, my mom told me that she heard a woodpecker, I think for the first time this year, and then she saw a pealeated woodpecker, which they're huge and beautiful. It was the first one she had seen this year. Y'all my mom is all into it. She's a common life's biggest fan. She comments on all of our newsletters. She's the first one to comment in light. Shout out to Margaret, she's our biggest fan. Thanks, mom. And let's see, usually Morels are coming up in March. Pretty pumped about that too. We have one little spot. That it's pretty consistent. I think the kids are going to be all about it again.
Morgan Myers:Yeah, if you're not into foraging but you want to be or you want to learn more about it. Morels are a really good first thing, because I mean, when you first start talking about finding mushrooms, that can be kind of scary, like how do I know what's okay to eat and what's not okay to?
Taylor Myers:eat.
Morgan Myers:Morels look so different than any other mushroom, and it's like a treasure hunt. It is truly so fun to go out and look for them.
Taylor Myers:Yeah, because when you find one you just are like beyond excited and if you're listening to this in South Alabama, like zone eight, South Georgia. I mean, early March is when they're going to be popping up for you guys.
Morgan Myers:First two weeks of March. It has to do with the soil temperature, right? Yeah, so for us it's later March.
Taylor Myers:Yeah, I'd have to get back and check, but I would say middle to late March Again like not 100% certain and not an expert on this, like some guys like I'm thinking of you know in my head he's like he knows and he like tracks them north, kind of thing. They move, it's like every. They move like 200 miles every week or so north until you know the season ends up in like Minnesota or something, or yeah, they're going north as the soil warms up, so a lot of really fun things in March.
Taylor Myers:That's happening and the gardens are kicking into gear. I'm really excited about our garden this year. It already looks so good. Next week we'll talk about some of the things we've done this past month. I'm excited to share with you all. And until then, yeah, happy gardening. Happy gardening.