The garden, May 22nd
Planting garden was our main task for the weekend. And what a gorgeous weekend for it! Sunny, not too windy, highs near 70 and lows in the 50s. There’s just nothing more satisfying than being out there digging in the dirt. And the dirt just gets better every year as it loosens up and gains organic matter. Even the flower beds are hosting more and more earthworms. It’s a good feeling to know that we’re feeding the soil as well as ourselves.
One comical sight around here is the sight of the hens flocking to the garden when they hear Matt fire up the rototiller. They come a-running and follow behind him looking for worms, seeds and other goodies. They also like to eat seeds I’m trying to plant before I can get the row covered. It will be interesting to see how many holes there’ll be in my bean rows. I hope the beans come up quickly so I can replant whatever’s missing! Matt’s got the fence up now, so this shouldn’t be a problem anymore.
Another challenge is keeping Rafe out of the already-planted part of the garden. He loves to dig in the dirt, but he doesn’t always watch where he’s digging – or stepping. I think we finally got it through his head this weekend that he can dig in the walkway between the strawberry bed and the ends of the vegetable rows. He isn’t too interested yet in helping put seeds in the ground, but he loves to hammer in the stakes to mark the row ends.
Olivia did help me plant most of the beans, cover the rows and tamp them. I discovered the addiction joys of growing drying beans last year. And I thought heritage tomatoes were fun! Drying beans come in so many beautiful colors and patterns and just like heritage tomatoes, drying beans have such fun names. I planted Bumble Bee, Ireland Creek Annie, Kentucky Wonder Bush, Empress, Shirofuma (an edamame type), and one other one I can’t remember.
I keep telling Matt we’re not going to have enough room in the garden this year, and he keeps trying to tell me we have plenty. We’re going to plant all the melons, squash and pumpkins outside of the main garden this year so I think we will indeed have enough garden space, even for the many rows of cutting flowers that Madeline wants to put in for her 4-H horticulture project. She’s got 4 trays of starts in the basement. But I won’t be convinced until the last thing is planted!
Our grand plan for the aforementioned melons, squash and pumpkins is to plant them along the fence that divides pasture from lawn. It’s going to be a whole-family project. First we’ll lay paper feed sacks down to smother the weeds and grass, wet the sacks so that they decompose a little more quickly, pile well-composted manure on top of the feed sacks, and then plant our vining seeds and starts right into the compost. I hope it works! If it does, it will free up needed space in the main garden plus do away with the unsightly weeds that take over that fenceline.
We planted our garden this weekend to and I agree the weather was perfect! I still have to plant watermelons winter squash pumpkins etc. Hugs
Oh I’m so glad to see that a professional gardener just put in seeds as well! Mine went in last weekend too… I was so fearful that I was too late in the season — but it’s been so rainy that I haven’t been able to get out there. Good luck with all of it!
Ha, Lynne! professional gardener I’ll post a picture of this garden later in the summer, and we’ll see how professional it looks with the jungle of weeds obscuring the sprawling tomato plants that I never got around to staking 🙂