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First Work Day for 2014
We had our first work day of the season this morning, and boy am I tired! I’m afraid that my gardening muscles are pretty out of shape this spring.
Our most important task for the day was to incorporate some beautiful, new compost into all of our beds. Since we renovated two years ago, the soil level has settled quite a bit. Some beds had dropped about 5+ inches of soil! So, adding compost gets us a boost of nutrients for the year, adds more bulk to our soil mix, and helps to counteract our very sandy soil in our raised beds.
This is from early last summer (I got you excited, didn’t I?), and you can see that the soil level is dropped in the close bed and all the sand pooling on the surface.
Look at that hard-working crew! We had a whole bunch of compost to work (6 cu. yards) and we got it done in record time! Based on our experience from filling the beds two years ago, we made trenches in each bed to help with the mixing process.
You can see here that we dug a couple trenches pretty close to the edges of the beds, because we found that it was pretty sandy right along the edges. Then we dumped in the compost and went to work mixing everything in.
You can see the nice brown compost mixing with the lighter colored soil.
You may also have noticed that we removed the drip lines before the mixing. Since they were already disconnected, it wasn’t a big deal. However, nothing is worth having punctures and slices all through your drip lines! At that point you might as well start over.
Our herb gardeners cleaned up the perennial herb garden, dug all the plants that were still alive, added the new compost, and then replanted. Even with the cold winter, some of the perennials are looking good! We were excited to see the French Tarragon looking so healthy, since it is the Herb of the Year this year.
We did get started planting a few things, but I need to save something to post about later this week, right?
It’s March Madness!
I’m sure that “March Madness” probably refers to basketball games for most of you. However, in Demo Garden land, March can get pretty crazy with the garden to-do list, let alone everything else. I thought that you might find it interesting to know what is on our “To-Do” list for the first part of spring, rather than seeing the posts about the different projects as we complete them.
This week: Hardening off early kale & lettuce seedlings; ordering compost; making sure seeds are organized for planting
Next week: Adding (and incorporating) compost to top off the raised beds; transplanting kale & lettuce; starting pepper seeds indoors; planting a few seeds and potatoes outdoors; general cleanup and cutting back dead herbs
Week of March 24th: Planting onion plants, bare-root strawberry plants, other cleanup?
Week of March 31st: Starting tomatoes indoors; planting beets, carrots, etc outside
Of course, the big project on the list is getting the compost added and incorporated. Everything else is pretty routine!
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