Seeds in the ground

I cranked up the tiller at 9 a.m. and got busy.  Three and a half hours later, I'm sitting here in the cool, a little sunburned, but showered and shampooed and feeling accomplished.  Between me, Nanny, and The Husband, the garden is made. 

What went down was 4 rows of purple hull peas, two rows of Fordhook butter beans, three short rows of Marcotte green beans, 12 hills of cucumbers, six hills of butternut squash, and a row of okra.  I have space left for more crookneck squash, but I don't have any seeds.  I may run get some before the day is over, for it is supposed to rain in the next few days. 

Although I'd intended to do half of the garden in the "no-till" method, it turned out that only the tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cabbages, and peppers got that treatment.  I tilled the rest of the garden as usual.  I'd hoped to plant one row of beans in the no-till zone and one row of the same kind of beans in the tilled area so that I could compare their growth, but it didn't work out that way.  Long story.

When we prepared to dig holes for the plants in the no-till zone, we flipped over every other hay patty, and dug holes where they'd been.  After we planted, we put down more newspaper (HINT: wet newspaper is soooooo much easier to work with), separated the hay patties, and sprinkled loose hay around the plants.  This resulted in having about 1/2 of each hay patty left over to sprinkle atop newspaper and cardboard that we laid between the rows to keep down weeds.  I am crossing my fingers that we won't have to do much weeding in those areas.  Stay tuned to see if it works.

I am also hoping that this newspaper/hay treatment will cut down on blight infestation.  For the past few years, half of my gardening time has been spent fighting blight.  Hopefully, this mulching will separate the plants' leaves from the soil and keep down the rain-splash transfers of fungus from ground to plant.  As soon as the tomato plants settle in, I'm going to dose them with the mixture I used last year, which seemed to work as well as (if not better than) any commercial fungicide I've used:  one gallon of water, and a 1:1 ratio of baking soda and vegetable oil.  (I used 2 tbs. of each per gallon of water).  The baking soda creates an alkaline environment that the blight fungus doesn't like; the vegetable oil helps the soda stick to the leaves.

Tomatoes, Squash, Peppers

The garden looks more like a garden today.

The Husband, Nanny, and I spent several hours yesterday morning digging and planting.  We took a break around noon and went back to work about 5 p.m. when the garden was in shade.  Two hours later, all of the plants were in the ground in the "no-till" section:  48 tomatoes, 12 squash, 12 zucchini, and 12 pepper plants.

I did some tilling in the other half of the garden, but did not get finished.  Tomorrow, we'll be at it again, finishing the tilling and planting the peas, lima beans, and green beans.


 

Ground-breaking News

Wednesday afternoon, when I had come home from work and was about to walk across the road to the mailbox, Uncle B. came motoring toward me on his riding lawnmower, cutting the grass along the road bank.  I waved at him, got the mail, and started back toward my driveway.  By this time, he'd mowed past me and made a U-turn and was coming back.  I heard the blades shut down as he approached.  He eased to a stop at the end of my driveway and shut off the motor.

"You doing all right?" he asked.

"Yes, sir.  You?"

"I'm getting along pretty good, I reckon, for an old man.  I want to ask you something.  Are you going to raise a garden this year?"

(He's got his garden in, already.)

I said, "Well, yes, sir, I intend to."

He said, "I saw you out there putting down hay way back in the winter, and I thought maybe you were going to plant an early garden, but I don't see nothin' out there but a few cabbages."

I explained what happened:  I was going to try the "no-till" method; I planted cabbages, and later some tomatoes, but a freak late frost took out the tomatoes; then I got sick with a sinus infection and felt too bad to work in the garden; then it rained; and rained; and, yeah, well, I'm just late.

He nodded, asked after my mother, cranked up, and drove away, leaving me with a big guilt trip.

You see, I'd toyed with the idea of not raising a garden this year.  When I said that to The Husband later that evening, he gave me THE LOOK - the one that silently shouts HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?  I knew what he was thinking:  All that time and effort and money to put down newspaper and hay, and she's thinking about not having a garden....

So, between Uncle B. and The Husband, the guilt forced me to the garden center today to buy plants and seeds.  I got 48 tomato plants, a dozen or more pepper plants, and squash and zucchini plants.  Got purple-hull pea and Fordhook lima bean seeds.  Meant to get some cucumbers.

I came home and played a mean trick on The Husband.  He usually mows our yard and Nanny's on the weekends.  I need him in the garden tomorrow, so I mowed our yard yesterday and Nanny's yard today, to take away his excuse. 

Yeah, I'm mean that way.

About those early tomatoes....

I planted 8 tomato plants on the 12th of April.  On the 14th, we had a cold snap that brought a light frost for a couple of nights.  I did not cover the tomato plants because the cold snap sneaked up on me.  They are now brown and crispy.  Dead, you might say.

Early Tomatoes

It was so warm last week that I could not resist picking up a couple of 4-packs of tomato plants.  Late Saturday morning, I set them out in the garden and mulched them with straw.  I also began planting a row of Mascotte beans, but I hadn't gotten far down the row when The Husband announced that we were supposed to meet some folks for lunch, so I had to quit.   To be honest, I wasn't all that sorry to quit.  Having decided to try "no till" gardening this year, I had to poke individual holes for the beans, rather than opening up a furrow with the tiller then running the bicycle-on-a-stick planter down the row.  It was a pain.  The ground was really too wet to be planting things, anyway. 

Last night, we had stormy weather.  After sunrise, the temperature went down instead of up.  There's a frost warning out for tonight.  Figures.  The ONE YEAR I actually get to plant something early, and we have a late frost. 

Maybe the tomatoes will be safe nestled in their straw beds.

Cabbages

Today when I was leaving the nursing home after visiting my mother, Mr. Fred was sitting on the front porch, taking in the warm breeze.  We greeted one another, and then asked me where I was going.  I told him I was fixing to go home and plant cabbages. 

He said, "You late."
I said, "Yes, I know."
He said, "Anyhow, you don't 'plant' cabbages, you 'set 'em out'."

He told me he always raised a garden because he just liked to grow things.  Then he said, "I don't take much out of it, myself, but I give things to the old women in the neighborhood."

That Mr. Fred sure knows the way to a woman's heart. 

Then he said, "They won't hardly come pick it, but they're right glad to have whatever I'll take to them."

I said, "Ain't that just the way, Mr. Fred?"  ;)

So I came home, got my gloves and my shovel and my cabbage sets, and went to the garden.

I have been grooming about 8 rows for the no-till gardening method - layers of newspaper, covered by layers of straw, and sprinkled with alfalfa sprouts, like the man told me.  I peeled back the hay, plunged my shovel through the wet newspaper, and lifted out a shovel full of dirt.  Guess what I saw?  WORMS!  Big, fat, juicy ones.  YES!  The soil man said that worms are a sign of healthy soil, but I haven't been seeing any.  Maybe they've always been there, and we've just been chopping them up with plows and tillers.  In any case, I was happy to see them. 

Now, it's really too wet to be planting anything, but I planted - excuse me, set out - those cabbages anyway, because it's supposed to rain again tonight, and I can let Mother Nature do the watering.  Besides, if I keep waiting, it'll be way too late, and my cabbages would probably croak.

I also had a package of brussels sprouts that I bought a month ago and never got around to planting.  They are limp and pitiful, but I planted them, anyway, in a flower bed in front of my house.  It will be a miracle if they live. 

So, the gardening season on the hill has officially begun.

In about two weeks, I'm going in with some squash seeds and bean seeds, maybe even a few tomato plants. 

I'll keep you posted.  ;)

Cousin Roger and the Kefir

Heh.

Cousin Roger came over from across the road today.  He came in with a beer in one hand and some paperwork that he needed some help with in the other.  After The Husband got the paperwork fixed up, Roger sat back to visit a while and tell us about the date he had lined up for this evening. 

Just prior to Roger's arrival, I had been straining today's batch of kefir.  The kefir is making faster than I want to drink it, and I've been pawning off the extra on anybody who will take it.  My "reserve" jug in the refrigerator was too full to hold today's batch, so I poured up a big glass of the chilled kefir to make room in the jar and set it aside while I did the straining.  Before I got around to drinking it myself, Roger came in.  I remembered that he'd said he'd been having a lot of heartburn, and I asked him if that was still the case.  When he said that he was still suffering with it, and eating antacids like candy, I handed him my glass of kefir and said, "Here, drink this.  It might help your heartburn if you can choke it down."

He looked suspicious.  "What is it?"

"Fermented milk.  Be a big boy and drink it, and if you like it I'll send some home with you."

"Hell, I'll try anything if it'll help," he said, and he turned the glass up and chugged it like a beer.

A few cusswords later, he handed the glass back to me, and went on talking about antacids.  He said he recently heard that eating too many antacid tablets could cause constipation.  "And you know," he said, "come to think of it, I'm not real regular."

I said, "Well, you might be regular by tomorrow."

We shot the bull a little more, then Roger went home.  (He didn't ask for any kefir to take home.)  The Husband left to go pick up The Grandson.  My telephone rang just after he left.

"Let me speak to The Husband," Roger said.

"He's gone to get The Grandson," I told him.  "What do you need?"

"Listen, tell him NOT TO DRINK THAT STUFF," Roger said.  "I didn't even make it across the yard good before it hit me!"

"Oh, no!  What happened?  Did you puke?"  (After he drank the kefir, I wondered if it would react with the beer in his stomach and blow him up like a toad, but I didn't mention this to Roger.)

"Naw, I didn't puke," he said.  "I had to come in and wash my clothes, though!"

Heh.  Silly Cousin Roger.  He was kidding.

I hope.  ;)