Ending and Beginning

Today I dug up the area where we’ll soon plant kale, collards, and Swiss chard. It was just dry enough to turn over after last week’s rain, but not dry enough to rake out and plant. Sounds like we’re in for some more t-storms late Monday into Tuesday, so planting may have to wait until next weekend. This is a really early spring so far; feels like it will continue into a hot summer.

While digging up the greens bed, removed more of the ever-present plastic sheeting of various kinds we used for mulch 5-10 years ago, in a futile attempt to thwart the quack grass without effort. We’ve learned since that quack grass will defeat any kind of plastic mulch, and in fact seems to like it. Also found and removed more pieces of what was apparently carpet used as mulch. Well, at least we’ve learned the lesson: never use synthetics for mulch — it just doesn’t work.

Have also been removing quite a bit more glass from various areas of the garden this spring. It’s normal for things buried in the soil to be revealed in spring, especially after the first spring rains, and I may be digging glass out of our garden for the rest of my life. Makes it tough on the boys, who want to be out there in bare feet, but in a month or so their feet will be toughened up and they’re also getting old enough to watch where they walk.

G and I also worked on making a permanent stone path in the garden out of flat pieces of urbanite and limestone. That helps to keep people from walking in places where plants grow and to divide up the space.

One onion up from the seeds I planted on 4/3.

Planted more onions today plus 4 pots each (two seeds in each pot) of Yellow Brandywine and Matt’s Red Cherry tomato.