A day in the garden

With today being an actual factual day off from the store -- and no rain in sight -- I decided this was going to be a full day in the garden. Well, minus the time to fill the clotheslines with laundry! LOL I still have more to do tomorrow, thanks to the kitties having emptied a linen closet shelf on the floor, and having changed the bed linens as well... but the bulk is done and will be brought in tomorrow as I am just too tired and stiff and sore at the moment.

K went out and ran the high wheel cultivator up and down between several rows, but when I went out to complete hand-weeding the row that I had not finished on my last day out, I learned a bit more about my soil. 1.5 inches of rain within a couple of days and no wind following makes for soil that is too wet, early in the morning, for optimal weeding. The day I weeded after the inch of rain was accompanied by sun and wind. We had neither today, but I completed the row anyway despite the soil not wanting to part company with the weed roots.

I did cabbage worm patrol and found that I had a bad tendency to get distracted and want to pull bind weed. I tried to pull what I found in the cabbage rows while looking for worms. Hope I didn't miss too many of either. The place I pulled bindweed earlier still seems to be pretty free of the stuff, so this is the way to go with this pest.

K and I had discussed, next time I didn't have to work and the cart was empty, hauling broken cement block from a pile in the back to use as a border for the herb garden so, after dumping my cart of weeds and offloading the bucket of rocks, that was next on the list. We used the tractor to pull the cart and made several trips with the only physical work being the loading and unloading of the blocks.

Then, while the cart was still empty, I decided to begin moving some of the "straw" from the back field that I had attempted to pile for compost last fall (and which almost immediately BLEW OVER in our over achieving winds) to where the compost pile will live, on the east side where I had been piling weeds and where the neighbor had brought a small cart load of horse manure. Discovered that I NEED the wooden pallets that friends have offered me. Making free form compost piles... well the don't quite pile right, but I alternated the dry weeds (wetting them down as I went -- I have proof positive how, and why, thatched roofs work! the bottom of the pile was bone dry!), pulled weeds with some soil on their roots and the manure.

While I working in this area, I noticed that the areas where K had cultivated were almost totally free of weeds! There are grass plants to pull, but most of the other weeds have been gathered at the end of the rows, so weeding these potato rows should go quickly when I next get to work.

After putting the border around the herb garden I decided the next job needed to be completing the weeding of the Sweet Anne and the basil, so that I could put into the earth seedlings I had been given.

I guess either the soil there is better drained, or by afternoon the moisture was being taken up by plants and the water table, as the weeding went well and the baby plants were quickly put into the soil. After seeing how effective K's cultivation had been, and having hoe in hand, I decided to hoe some of the herb circle. Got it about 3/4 done before my muscles and stomach told me it was time to quit and consider supper.

Tomorrow is a town day, but I am hoping to make it a quick enough trip to get back into the garden again, after getting the laundry completed.