Back To The Garden

We've finally had several nice days up here in the way-beyond middle-of-nowhereland. That has allowed lots of outside work to be completed. The garden space has been worked, despite a slight mishap with the garden tiller. Note to self: when turning the little garden tractor sharply, remember the tiller attachment on the back swings farther out in the opposite direction of your turn. AND having the tines rotating at a rapid clip means they will grab the strip of old truck tarp that's suppressing the weeds next to the asparagus row and wrap it up on said tines until it kills the motor. This happens rather quickly, too. That little mishap cost two hours of vital gardening time to fix. Even though the tarp was well weathered, having been in place for years, it was still difficult to chop into small pieces to remove. It's kind of amazing how fast scissors will raise (and tear open) a blister on the back of your ring finger. Luckily the only damages were the loss of time, the blister (now healing), and 5-6' of old tarp (now in tatters). Side note: the tarp was effective: there's no sign of bind weed where it had been. (What's left of that strip of tarp is back in place.)

The drip system has been laid out and staked down. I haven't yet hooked up the hoses, so it hasn't been run to check which emitters might be clogged. Sunday's nice rain means I can take a bit of time before doing that chore. I'll need to replace all the rubber washers in every hose connection before opening the hydrant. (There's some kind of hitch in my hydrant: while I can open it up fairly easily, I cannot shut it down without my strong life partner. So once it's up, it stays up.)

I have several large old plastic planters I plan to use for potatoes this year. I've upended them alongside a flowerbed where the sprinkler regularly overshoots that bed. I'm going to cut out the bottoms of the pots, put in a few inches of soil/rotted leaves/compost, then plant the seed potatoes in that. I'll add potting soil as they grow, until the pots are full. To harvest, I'll simply pull the pots up and off, no digging required. That added soil should remain fairly loose, so if I want baby potatoes before the vines die in the fall, I can wriggle my hands in and grab some.

I'm still figuring out what I'll plant where in the actual garden. Onion sets will go in first, and shallots. I'll get the peas fences erected so those can go in next. Lettuces and radishes will follow. They'll take some cold, plus I have frost cloth I can throw over them if a freeze threatens. Other seeds, such as corn and beans, will wait until all danger of frosts and freezes passes. I can get my walls of water filled so tomatoes can be set out earlier than I could without those protectors.

I still need to trim the dead canes out of the raspberry rows. Usually there are lots of dead leaves caught up around those canes that I'd pull out as I cut out the dead canes. I'd rake the dead leaves from the rhubarb, cherry, gooseberry, and honeyberry row at the bottom of the garden. This year I used my battery-operated leaf blower. What a game-changer that was! I moved more dead leaves (and other trash) in an hour than I used to do in a day of raking. I recommend wearing a dust mask for this.

The battery-operated chainsaw has also seen some use this past week. The huge tree branch that broke off, that I couldn't move by myself, is now cut into manageable-sized chunks. Those chunks are out of the way of the mower. Soon the other, slightly smaller, branches will likewise be chopped into smaller chunks to be hauled away. The lawn was then mowed (mostly to suck up the leaves the winds kept moving about). Now that it's rained, I'm sure that chore will need to be repeated soon. It's sure nice to see green instead of white, isn't it?

I did write to the company I ordered seeds from to report the ones that didn't sprout at all. I haven't heard from them yet, but it's only been a couple of days, the weekend at that, so they get more time to reply.