garden notes or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the irregular wide row
(This year's trivia contest movie, btw, is Dr. Strangelove.)
Friday saw the car coming home laden with things. Surprisingly, many of these things are already in the ground.
Jung's bareroot room was open. I got another plum tree, two blueberry shrubs, and 4 fistfuls of onion sets.
And also what I thought was a "ruby spice" clethra (summersweet), but was actually a forsythia.
And...one of the blueberries was in the wrong bin, so it isn't the type I thought it was.
I've planted both - I tend to just work with whatever I've got, and it's not like I'm short on space - but if I'd noticed that two items were not what I wanted, I'd have been more likely to carve out time next week to go back and complain.
As it is, I'll just warn others: Jung's bareroot can be a handy place to hand-pick bulk trees and shrubs, but read every single tag before buying anything.
I'm no big fan of forsythia - they're pretty for all of about a week in early spring. But on the theory that they bloom best after spending the winter under snow, I've planted it right where much of the driveway snow is piled. If it lives, then hooray. If not...enh.
The blueberry bushes are both the taller ones, and are to test the idea of planting blueberries all along the front of my rows of white pines. In theory the ground there would be more acidic - which blueberries require.
Anyway, 4 piles of onion sets is a bit much - but I got them into the ground. Mars red, red candy apple, Alisia Craig exhibition, and...some texas sweet thing. We'll see how they go - sweets don't really do the same thing here as elsewhere; I think "sweet" has more to do with the soil than anything else.
I finally came to accept that I can't fit all the nightshade-family items into just 1/4 of the new garden beds. So, some last-minute changing of the crop rotation was done: there will now be two full beds of potatoes, and one full bed of tomatoes (and borage or basil or something). Based on the hundreds of tomato seedlings growing in the entryway, and based on tomatoes being the main thing that keeps people coming to famer's markets, this is a good decision. In a year or two, this will break the crop rotation, and I will either need to expand just a bit more or I will need to make other accommodations. Assuming I'm still growing so many veg then.
Anyway, yesterday was productive. I hand-tilled all 8 of the 3x18 beds in the "new" garden, and turned in amendments. And did final prep on one bed and planted all the aforementioned onion sets. And planted all the bareroot purchases. And cleaned last year's debris from the two decorative garden beds most noticeable to the neighbors - a minimum politeness.
Amendments added: 16 lbs of cottonseed meal spread across all beds, plus 5 lbs of "garden gypsum" added to the tomato bed.
Digging the 3x18 rows is - well, easier than last year, and every year it will get easier. But for now, still a lot of grass in wrong places, and stuff like that. I've come to the personal understanding that it isn't important that every bed be exactly 3 feet wide and dead straight, or that every walkway be exactly 18 inches. Just dig and clear and get it done. Which I did, mostly. I want to use the thatching rake and score the remaining grassy edges enough to drop clover seed onto it. And then I will mark the end of each walkway with the 99-cent 12x12 pavers I picked up at HD.
It occured to me that only half of the new beds need irrigation. The potatoes don't need it - in fact, it would be a pain for something that needs the soil disturbed that much during the year - and likely neither do the onions. Mom has declared somewhat proudly that she never watered her garden.
I'm waffling on working more in the garden today. I have non-garden things that need doing too. And after yesterday, I was totally beat until I'd had a long, long sleep. And some of the non-garden things are for the day job - it is often too distracting to get what I want done at work, and ever so much easier and more productive from home. There are timelines and learning curves and many people I need to be able to knowledgeably nudge into doing things...so I don't want to drop the ball on the day-job work. So I don't want to go toil in the yard until I'm too tired to hold my head up.
My gut says waiting another week to plant the potatoes is entirely sensible - although it might rain next weekend, and also it's trivia weekend so I'll be not doing much gardening.
Shallots...the sooner the better. Wouldn't say no to some more carrots being planted - but that implies working over another garden bed. The shallots go in the onion bed, which is ready to go.
Phenology: bloodroot is in bloom. Saw my first dandelion blossoms. Something in the berry hedge, I think the nanking bush cherry, is in bloom.
Things budded out and ready to bloom soon: some tulips, the ground sand cherry, the sour cherry trees, the shooting star, the really massive hyacinth.
Besides the bareroot purchases and stack of pavers, I crammed 4 bags of cocoa mulch into the car Friday. I'll need more, but it's a start. I like cocoa mulch for gardens, because it doesn't draw nutrients from the soil while decomposing, and it can just be turned into the soil at the end of the year (which helps to de-clay my clay), and it will provide various nutrients - I think potassium is the main one. Nice and simple, and the main reason I still shop at Jung (I can usually get it there for 3.99 a bag). Only takes an inch or so of cocoa mulch to retard most weeds and keep the moisture in, so one bag goes a long way.
A bird stole some bright tape from one of the numerous construction-zone markers in the area, and added it to its nest. Heh.
Friday saw the car coming home laden with things. Surprisingly, many of these things are already in the ground.
Jung's bareroot room was open. I got another plum tree, two blueberry shrubs, and 4 fistfuls of onion sets.
And also what I thought was a "ruby spice" clethra (summersweet), but was actually a forsythia.
And...one of the blueberries was in the wrong bin, so it isn't the type I thought it was.
I've planted both - I tend to just work with whatever I've got, and it's not like I'm short on space - but if I'd noticed that two items were not what I wanted, I'd have been more likely to carve out time next week to go back and complain.
As it is, I'll just warn others: Jung's bareroot can be a handy place to hand-pick bulk trees and shrubs, but read every single tag before buying anything.
I'm no big fan of forsythia - they're pretty for all of about a week in early spring. But on the theory that they bloom best after spending the winter under snow, I've planted it right where much of the driveway snow is piled. If it lives, then hooray. If not...enh.
The blueberry bushes are both the taller ones, and are to test the idea of planting blueberries all along the front of my rows of white pines. In theory the ground there would be more acidic - which blueberries require.
Anyway, 4 piles of onion sets is a bit much - but I got them into the ground. Mars red, red candy apple, Alisia Craig exhibition, and...some texas sweet thing. We'll see how they go - sweets don't really do the same thing here as elsewhere; I think "sweet" has more to do with the soil than anything else.
I finally came to accept that I can't fit all the nightshade-family items into just 1/4 of the new garden beds. So, some last-minute changing of the crop rotation was done: there will now be two full beds of potatoes, and one full bed of tomatoes (and borage or basil or something). Based on the hundreds of tomato seedlings growing in the entryway, and based on tomatoes being the main thing that keeps people coming to famer's markets, this is a good decision. In a year or two, this will break the crop rotation, and I will either need to expand just a bit more or I will need to make other accommodations. Assuming I'm still growing so many veg then.
Anyway, yesterday was productive. I hand-tilled all 8 of the 3x18 beds in the "new" garden, and turned in amendments. And did final prep on one bed and planted all the aforementioned onion sets. And planted all the bareroot purchases. And cleaned last year's debris from the two decorative garden beds most noticeable to the neighbors - a minimum politeness.
Amendments added: 16 lbs of cottonseed meal spread across all beds, plus 5 lbs of "garden gypsum" added to the tomato bed.
Digging the 3x18 rows is - well, easier than last year, and every year it will get easier. But for now, still a lot of grass in wrong places, and stuff like that. I've come to the personal understanding that it isn't important that every bed be exactly 3 feet wide and dead straight, or that every walkway be exactly 18 inches. Just dig and clear and get it done. Which I did, mostly. I want to use the thatching rake and score the remaining grassy edges enough to drop clover seed onto it. And then I will mark the end of each walkway with the 99-cent 12x12 pavers I picked up at HD.
It occured to me that only half of the new beds need irrigation. The potatoes don't need it - in fact, it would be a pain for something that needs the soil disturbed that much during the year - and likely neither do the onions. Mom has declared somewhat proudly that she never watered her garden.
I'm waffling on working more in the garden today. I have non-garden things that need doing too. And after yesterday, I was totally beat until I'd had a long, long sleep. And some of the non-garden things are for the day job - it is often too distracting to get what I want done at work, and ever so much easier and more productive from home. There are timelines and learning curves and many people I need to be able to knowledgeably nudge into doing things...so I don't want to drop the ball on the day-job work. So I don't want to go toil in the yard until I'm too tired to hold my head up.
My gut says waiting another week to plant the potatoes is entirely sensible - although it might rain next weekend, and also it's trivia weekend so I'll be not doing much gardening.
Shallots...the sooner the better. Wouldn't say no to some more carrots being planted - but that implies working over another garden bed. The shallots go in the onion bed, which is ready to go.
Phenology: bloodroot is in bloom. Saw my first dandelion blossoms. Something in the berry hedge, I think the nanking bush cherry, is in bloom.
Things budded out and ready to bloom soon: some tulips, the ground sand cherry, the sour cherry trees, the shooting star, the really massive hyacinth.
Besides the bareroot purchases and stack of pavers, I crammed 4 bags of cocoa mulch into the car Friday. I'll need more, but it's a start. I like cocoa mulch for gardens, because it doesn't draw nutrients from the soil while decomposing, and it can just be turned into the soil at the end of the year (which helps to de-clay my clay), and it will provide various nutrients - I think potassium is the main one. Nice and simple, and the main reason I still shop at Jung (I can usually get it there for 3.99 a bag). Only takes an inch or so of cocoa mulch to retard most weeds and keep the moisture in, so one bag goes a long way.
A bird stole some bright tape from one of the numerous construction-zone markers in the area, and added it to its nest. Heh.