What Did You Do In The Garden?

busy weeding the North Garden today, after finishing the top part of that i checked out the strawberry patch weeded some bedstraw (that stuff can grow fast - it already had seeds on it) and then picked a few berries so we could eat them instead of letting the chipmunks and other varmints eat them all (i got maybe a cup - too tired at the moment to look at them).
 
After the sunshine warmed the local environment this morning it was quite a nice day.

Got the protected beds watered and weeded a new bed out in the open. There was quite a lot of bindweed showing up in one of the old paths and I pried that out of the ground with the dandelion killer.

Then a thought occurred to me. I bought a Mantis-type tiller years ago. It was only useful in one of my gardens and when I gave that garden up, it just couldn't deal with the rocky soil in the distant garden. I parked it. Would it be of benefit here at home?

I don't think I'd ever tried it here. Things were too limited but there are now more beds and paths. I brought it out. It was a little difficult to prime the fuel system after, maybe 10 years of sitting but then, it started and that Honda engine ran nicely :). I tilled a path. It didn't do a wonderful job but there's nothing stopping me from going back over it tomorrow, next week – 3 times, every other week or whatever is needed. No weed will have a chance with the continued harassment of that little tiller.

There may be ample opportunity to dig out the beds in the Fall but if not, it could have some use in the beds. The big tiller is available but just doing the paths, it's hardly worth the bother to bring it out. The little one might have come back into usefulness.

:) Steve
 
gardening didn't happen too much today as we were mowing and i needed to try to cut back some tall grass that wasn't cut when it was due. i didn't even get all of that done but it was close enough for this round. i'll keep chipping away at it each time i mow until i get caught up again.

in the meantime Mom says the hose didn't have very good water pressure but i did not think to check the other hose to make sure it was off. but as i was in the bathroom i heard a noise which sounded like someone had the water on someplace so i took the flashlight out and checked all the hoses and sure enough the hose was on way out in the garden. so it ran for quite a long time. oops... :(

also she said that the plants i'd set out to get some sunshine were flopped over from drying out and i did make sure they were watered this morning but i guess a full day in the sun and breeze did dry them out. she watered them a few times and they perked back up. *whew* thanks Mom! i brought them in at 11pm when the air finally got close to the temperature i wanted them to acclimate to. at least close enough, i wasn't going to wait any longer... plants now in the garage and safe from any raccoons or hoomans...

the plan for tomorrow is to get outside about 9am when the temperature should be a close match and get all the plants done before 2pm. tomatoes and peppers. i think i can get it done... rains in the forecast for after 2pm and also much of the rest of the week so it will be a good time to finally get them in the ground, plus the overnight temperatures are now going to be warmer for some days so they can acclimate and also get plenty of moisture and have some milder cloudy days instead of full on sunshine.
 
Mulched tomatoes and melons in open garden. The potatoes had this done about a week ago.

This was done with compost which and amounted to a bigger job than usual. Usually, there isn't any abundance of compost. Now, it's a scrounging for better compost because there is so much grass sod composting. Mixed in, from the 2 stealth compost bins, are several weeks worth of kitchen scraps and veggie waste direct from the garden – all below decks and ground level.

Wet and sticky, prying it out with a shovel, tossing off roots, heavy stems and sod that wasn't quite mixed in well enough – it required about an hour to come up with 5+, 5 gallon buckets of good compost to mulch the plants.

The pile of 100% grass sod no longer has its temporary wood and cardboard frame around it and sits in the open air about 1/2 its original height. It's decomposing but at a much slower rate than what was piled in what is below ground level. There doesn't appear to be any grass still living but it remains to be seen how many unwanted seeds remains. I was surprised that there was so much weed seed in the soil under it in the new garden beds.

It is somewhat ironic that all of this organic material is destined to be moved right back to the ground where it came from. It's okay and what is usually going on with composting, with additional scraps from the grocery shopping. I wish that it would have been possible to dig out the new beds during the early weeks and simply bury it but adequate depth would have required a backhoe or waaayy more time than this olde guy was willing to spend with a grubbing hoe and shovel.

Steve
 
digitS' said:
... I wish that it would have been possible to dig out the new beds during the early weeks and simply bury it but adequate depth would have required a backhoe or waaayy more time than this olde guy was willing to spend with a grubbing hoe and shovel.
Click to expand...

a foot and a half, a few layers of cardboard over it, very little comes up from that treatment. if the dirt wasn't so heavy here it would be a lot easier, i can imagine with your rocky soil it must also be fairly heavy...

as a sad side plot, my new shovel i got a year or two ago already has a crack in it. :(
 
SPedigrees said:
They don't make 'em like they used to.
Click to expand...

the previous one lasted quite a bit longer before developing a crack, i still use that one for scraping ice off the driveway as it has a much sharper and thinner blade.

the basic problem though is that i'm using a flat shovel for pretty heavy soil and they are not really designed for the kind of work i'm using them for. a spade with the curved design would be stronger and probably not crack. i do have a longer spade with the curved blade - i just don't like using it.
 
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