Garden Maintenance - May 30, 2020

If you have begun to read this post thinking it contains pearls of wisdom about garden maintenance, keep googling; this post is about griping about garden maintenance.  ;)

You'd think we live in the tropics judging by the way it has rained here in western Tennessee this month.  The vegetable garden is hairy with grass, and the ground has been too wet to do anything about it.  Yesterday, at last, the soil dried up enough to work.  I got off work early, came home, put on my hat and gloves, and went to the garden.  It was about 1:30 when I started. 

Ordinarily, I would have pulled out a tiller for the weeding job, but I'd read an article in Mother Earth News that said tilling the soil only brings more seeds to the top, so I decided to do all of the weeding with a hoe.  Although The Husband had sharpened my hoe about a week ago, it seemed dull.  I tried to sharpen it three times on the bench grinder, but couldn't get a good edge on it.  Also, the business end of the hoe felt wobbly, like it was about to fall off the handle.  Nevertheless, I hacked away for well over an hour before I decided to stop and see if I could find a video on how to properly sharpen a hoe.  By then, I'd only made it down one side of one green bean row, and was feeling a sunburn coming on.

Before going down to the garden, I'd tried (and failed) to crank our push-mower.  The grandchildren are coming this weekend, and I wanted to mow the yard before they get here.  Usually, we mow the tight, tricky spots with the push mower, and finish it off with the big riding mower, which we store in the shop at Nanny's.  My plan was to ride the big mower home, do the yard, watch the video, and go back to the garden with a sharp hoe when the sun was not so hot.

The riding mower would not crank.  It will fire right up for The Husband, but not for me.  Every single time.

And, as usual, when Nanny heard me trying to crank the mower, she came trotting out to the shed to advise me.  She can never get the mower to crank, either.  She said, "There's a kill switch, somewhere."  I'd never heard anything about a kill switch.  The mower won't crank if the parking brake is on, but the parking brake wasn't on.  She started fiddling with buttons and knobs and levers, looking for the kill switch that I believed did not exist.  I get so frustrated when she does this.  Finally, I said, "I'll just go home and ask The Husband about the kill switch." 

He said there's not a kill switch.

The article on sharpening hoes said not to do it on a bench grinder.  It said that the bench grinder would heat the metal too hot, and that if you do try to do it on a bench grinder, you should have a bucket of water nearby in which to cool the metal after every few seconds of sharpening.  It said to do it with a file.  I have NEVER been able to get a sharp edge with a file.

Meanwhile, The Husband came out to the porch where I was reading and examined the hoe.  The metal part of the hoe - the part where the handle fits into the "tube" - was crumbling.  Time for a new hoe.  I went to the hardware store and bought TWO hoes - one regular hoe, and one - I don't even know what it's called, but it has a flat edge on one end, and a fork on the other.  The guy at the hardware store sharpened both of them for me.

With TWO sharp hoes in hand, I went back to the garden.  The forked thing was amazing.  The flat, sharp end of the blade was narrow enough to slip between the plants, and the forked end did a good job of digging up deep roots and cracking the crusted soil around the beans.  I worked for hours.

During this time, I heard the front door of the shop roll up.  I'd left the back door open during the sharpening attempts, and from where I was in the garden, I could see The Husband gassing up the riding mower.  He climbed on, turned the key, and the #)(!@ mower fired right up.  When he looked up and saw me, I shot him the bird.  He shot it right back and gave me a couple of Three Stooges hand signals (BBBBBbbbbb, snark, snark) for good measure.  He went to mowing, and I went back to chopping.  By the time he finished mowing our yard and Nanny's yard, I'd weeded less than half of the garden, but I was whipped, and when he put away the riding mower, I put away my hoes and we came to the house.  It was 7 p.m. by then, and I hadn't eaten lunch.  I showered, put on my pajamas, fried a piece of bologna for a sandwich.  Every part of me was aching.  I took two Tylenol, and went to bed.

Gonna get after it again this morning, as soon as I eat breakfast.