60's people, 60'S!!!
So yesterday both the girls were pretty sick, and between the baby's sleep schedule being thrown off and the cat's typical (within the last 3 weeks) 5 A.M. "FEED ME!" wake-up call, we did not get up until almost 10 this morning. Didn't go to services, as I have a rule that showing up after 11:00 basically means you're stopping in just for the free lunch.
Which meant we've been home most of today, so I was finally able to indulge my gardening bug and work on the plot out back of the house and enjoy the 62 degree weather.
1/2 of the garden was already pretty thawed out, the other 1/2 still has a lot of icy chunks when you get about a foot down. But the ground is still workable. When I cleared away the couple feet of leaf mulch, I found that the strawberries made it (as hoped for), but also that the parsley from last year was actually green and growing. Also found some cilantro seeds sprouting. The carrots were mush, but one of the broccoli plants that I did not pull up also pulled through the winter.
I started digging out the east plot (the most thawed out), which involves digging down 2 feet and piling up the dirt on another piece of the garden, then filling in the hole with the leaves that had previously been covering the dirt, then adding in what veggies from the compost bin did not decompose over the winter, and then putting the dirt back on top. It raises the ground level almost a foot, until the matter has been eaten away by the resident earthworms (of which I also found many once I got over a foot down in the digging). When I first started the garden two years ago I was surprised to find black dirt down at least 2 feet (as far as I was willing to dig), but the other day we went on a walk and passed a lot where an older house was taken out and a new excavation was done for the new foundation, and it looked like at least 4 feet of black soil. A neighbor who has been here since the 60's told me the neighborhood had been prairie and then cow pasture back in the day, before it was built up in the 30's onwards; so I guess we're reaping the benefits in my 8x16 foot plot of thousands of years of post-glacial bio-matter build up.
Tonight I start the tomatoes!
Which meant we've been home most of today, so I was finally able to indulge my gardening bug and work on the plot out back of the house and enjoy the 62 degree weather.
1/2 of the garden was already pretty thawed out, the other 1/2 still has a lot of icy chunks when you get about a foot down. But the ground is still workable. When I cleared away the couple feet of leaf mulch, I found that the strawberries made it (as hoped for), but also that the parsley from last year was actually green and growing. Also found some cilantro seeds sprouting. The carrots were mush, but one of the broccoli plants that I did not pull up also pulled through the winter.
I started digging out the east plot (the most thawed out), which involves digging down 2 feet and piling up the dirt on another piece of the garden, then filling in the hole with the leaves that had previously been covering the dirt, then adding in what veggies from the compost bin did not decompose over the winter, and then putting the dirt back on top. It raises the ground level almost a foot, until the matter has been eaten away by the resident earthworms (of which I also found many once I got over a foot down in the digging). When I first started the garden two years ago I was surprised to find black dirt down at least 2 feet (as far as I was willing to dig), but the other day we went on a walk and passed a lot where an older house was taken out and a new excavation was done for the new foundation, and it looked like at least 4 feet of black soil. A neighbor who has been here since the 60's told me the neighborhood had been prairie and then cow pasture back in the day, before it was built up in the 30's onwards; so I guess we're reaping the benefits in my 8x16 foot plot of thousands of years of post-glacial bio-matter build up.
Tonight I start the tomatoes!