Ending and Beginning

Added 5 gallons of compost to 50 square foot bed outside back door and turned it over with a shovel. Also turned over another row of sod on west side of that bed:

Added 5 gallons of compost to the raised 4′ x 8′ bed in the garden (below), then filled it up the rest of the way with dirt from other places in the garden.

I got the compost from the black plastic compost bin. It’s one of those bins where you add the vegetable matter to the top and take it out from a door on the side near the bottom (and it’s a pain to get out). The compost is not completely finished, but I think it will finish in the soil in the weeks we have before planting. I plan on using the rest of it in the vicinity of plantings as we get the garden in.

We could be, and should be, making much more compost than we’re making. Adding large quantities of widely varied organic materials to your soil is the best way to improve it. Why aren’t we? I think mostly not having a lot of energy left after our jobs and parental duties, but also some laziness and lack of determination to make it happen. We certainly could make it happen if we both decided it was essential.

It got down into the 20s last night, and the thermometer in the greenhouse said 34°F this morning. It’s on the back wall of the greenhouse that’s common with the basement, so it may have been colder near the front glass wall where the tomatoes are. I opened the door to the basement when I went down this morning to warm it up — should have had it open all last night. I’m waiting to see if there’s any damage to the tomatoes.

Yup, three of the tomatoes are wilted, bent way over. I still have some hope that they’ll recover, because the leaves  look good. The rest seem okay.

I’m pretty mad at myself for letting that happen. It’s not safe outside for frost-intolerant plants yet, and I need to pay attention to the weather more than I have been. That greenhouse affords only slight protection from frost.

And now, an hour later, the three wilted tomatoes are standing up straight again! Whew! Got some of them outside for some unfiltered sunshine later in the day:

So I was out in the garden today, trying to stay ahead of the quack grass, digging it up with a small shovel and a spading fork. There’s still a lot of quack grass out there.

Then, I got to a place I had covered with corrugated cardboard and wood chips last summer in an effort to kill the grass. There were a few blades of grass showing through, so I dug into the cardboard. And underneath it, there is a heavy mat of thick, strong quack grass roots.

It gives me the creeps to even think of if, and I take back everything I’ve written about the quack grass problem not being too bad this year. It’s going to be another long, hard struggle.

What about some kind of frame with chicken wire through which you could sift topsoil? I wonder if that would be a way to get those roots out.

Transplanted another 11 tomatoes into 4″ square pots and moved the 23 largest down to the greenhouse. From now on we have to remember to open the outside greenhouse door in the morning and close it at night. Those down in the greenhouse are approaching the size of the plants they’ll be selling in garden centers a month from now, so I’d say we started the seeds a couple of weeks early.

Also got another 48″ 2-bulb fluorescent fixture going down in the greenhouse. It’s on that built-in timer I put down there ten or twelve years ago. I may move one of the three fixtures we have upstairs down to the greenhouse.

I bought 4 more rolls of 28″ x 50′ fencing yesterday.

I set some of the tomatoes outside for a few hours in the afternoon to start getting them used to full sun.