Hilling potatoes.
A Busy Time of Year
This time of year is fun for gardeners, but it can be a little frustrating too. The leaves are unfurling on my trees, the garden is tilled and mostly planted, I’m starting to thin my lettuce and spinach, but there isn’t much produce to harvest and eat. And isn’t that what gardening is all about…the harvest? Well, maybe not completely. I do enjoy the simple pleasure of working in my garden. But let’s face it, if there wasn’t an edible reward for all my labor, I probably wouldn’t be a gardener. Well, maybe I’d have a few flowers.
Watering the onions.
So, maybe you’ve already guessed this about me…I’m not the most patient person in the world. I have trouble waiting for the goodies to grow in my garden. I should have had my beds cleaned up last fall so I could have gotten an earlier start this spring. Then I might have more salads and early crops coming in right now. Apparently I’m an impatient procrastinator…not a good combo!
While I wait for my seedlings to grow and produce, I am trying to keep up with the necessary watering and weeding to improve my gardening results. We’ve had some rain, but it never comes at just the right time. I watered my garden the other day and voila, it rained that night. Hmmm, funny how that works. But I’ve been able to keep the soil moist and the weeds are really loving it. So now for the weeding part. I have yellow foxtail sprouting all over my garden. And there are always dandelions, velvet leaf, wild lettuce, and lambs quarters…all but the velvet leaf are edible.
I’ll be working on adding a layer of straw to the paths between my garden beds this week, and of course there is weeding to do. I also want to hill up the potatoes and the tomatoes can go in the ground as soon as I till their bed. But for now, I’m happy to wait a little and rest up from staining the deck. 🙂
We are enjoying volenteer seedlings and 4 yr old strawbery plants but we haven’t planted anything since we are moving next week.
I’m curious, how do you suggest keeping your soil moist and weed free? Just the straw? Have you tried grass clippings? We are transitioning from raised bed planting to 1 acre row cropping once we get moved in. Looking for tips and tricks 😉
Hi Talina,
Best wishes with your upcoming move! I also use cardboard laid down between rows and in my paths to keep weeds down. Newspaper works well around tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, etc. Grass clippings are great as long as the grass isn’t going to seed…which could make for some extra weeding later.
With 1 acre of row crops, I highly recommend the cardboard. You can pick it up at the grocery store, discount stores…places like that. Also check with furniture stores as they sometimes have large pieces. 🙂
I hope this helps!
We have been building more raised beds and filling them up…. so many plants are up, but the waiting game is also such a busy time… so much to do…. the asparagus is done, strawberries are ripening, but something (the rabbits, maybe… or chipmunks… squirrels….?) is eating them before we can..:(.. I need to double up some of my plants and will try to move some cucumbers to another bed… being in the city, we plant things tightly and grow UP rather than let things go where they will…. so need to get the trellis’ in place. I love this time of year, though…. 🙂
I’v had problems with chipmunks eating my strawberries, so I wouldn’t be surprised! Thanks for sharing, Gentle Joy!
Its hard and fun all at same time…
🙂
We were blessed with some rain early this morning enough to encourage the weeds and raise the humidity. 🙂 Need to get some serious weeding done in the gooseberry and blueberry cages while the ground is damp.
Found that there are wee tiny tomatoes and tommatillas set on while doing some emergency weeding yesterday and the squash is a riot of yellow blossoms. This is another odd sounding garden year but I will be trading my bounty for things I didn’t get planted again.
I am definitely a charter member of your impatient procrastinator club! Cheers!
I’m not sure about the impatient part but I am certainly a died-in-the wool procrastinator! I once bought one of those subliminal cassette tapes (yes, long LONG ago!) on procrastination – the kind that sound like ocean waves and seagulls – because my sister told me how well it worked for her. Seven years later, one of my employees was procrastinating on several things I had assigned to him so I decided to have him use it at his desk – I reached into my desk drawer and pulled out the unopened package and loaned it to him! lol
As for my gardens, I have so little sunshine near my house that the nearest suitable garden spot is several hundred yards away – and there’s no fence to keep the horses out yet – so my garden so far consists of just a 4′ X 8′ raised bed and six huge pots (half 55 gallon plastic drums) with a “tube” of chicken wire in the middle. I filled the raised bed and all the drum-pots with a well-composted cow manure/soil mix, some rabbit manure and a bit of worm castings from the worm farm tower in my living room. The chicken wire tube is used for kitchen composting scraps. So far, the tomatoes, peppers and basil are growing like crazy – I’m already pinching off the basil to keep it from seeding (I often throw those tops into the blender with a bit of water for use on bothersome fire ant beds) and the tomatoes are covered in blooms and small fruit. Then the procrastination kicked in and I just got the beans planted last week and some cucumber starter plants – squash still to come.
Leah, I am sitting here thinking how nice a mess of green beans would be but I’ve given up on planting them. Several years go we got an invasion of fuzzy tailed rats (normal people call them chipmunks) who are so brazen they will sit a wait just out of reach for me to plant beans so they can dig them up and stuff their fat faces full. The rude brats will even scold if I am not quick enough to suit them.
Our cat takes care of the chipmunks 🙂 I love beans too. I wonder if you could put chicken wire over the bean bed.
Sounds like we have a club going here! Thanks for sharing your adventures with me 🙂
I have gotten a slow start on my garden this year also. We were so busy in the spring that I didn’t get any early crops planted. I have just now planted tomatoes and herbs but at least I have something planted! : )
Hi Lucy,
I’m glad you were able to get your warm season crops in! Best wishes with your garden this year!