Weekend garden update

Posted on | June 2, 2008 | 8 Comments

Every inch of my body now hurts. I spent yesterday in non-stop physical labor digging holes to plant the fruit trees — one hole needed the help of a spud bar (a long, heavy, metal pole with a spike on the end that you lift up and slam down into the bottom of the hole to loosen the clay). I squatted and bent forward to plant tomatoes, cilantro, more lettuce starts and some Roma beans. I cut another area of the lawn with the rototiller on the south side of the house where I’ll plant more tomatoes, peppers, beans and summer squash. The tiller pulled up several giant rocks and my muscles experienced a shaking like they’ve never had before in the process.

Arugula is starting to throw flowers, so I’ll pull the rest of it tonight for a salad and re-seed the spot with some mesclun mix. The yard-long beans are poking up, as are the cocozelle zucchini, green-tint pattypan, and yellow crookneck. Just two patches remain un-planted in the bed behind the deck — about six square feet each. I’m thinking I’ll pop some bush bean seed in there.

Tonight I need to rake the sod out of the new bed, dump a dozen wheelbarrows full of manure into it and till it one more time. I still need to prune back the two pears and the pie cherry tree, too, and decide what method of espalier I want to do with the pears. They’ll become a living screen for our front porch.

The beds next door await and I’m torn. I have a bag of onion starts, as well as some onion and leek starts that should all go over there. Plus I haven’t seeded any beets yet, and I was also thinking rutebegas and turnips. But there’s something in the soil that’s gnawing on my root crops and making them look horrific. So I’m tempted to not plant anything over there except for some clover cover crop and just work on increasing the soil fertility. Maybe I’ll do that with half of the beds. I already have garlic, potatoes and peas planted in 2.5 of them.

Hey, does anybody know if it’s too late to put in strawberry plants? I had intended to start a bed, and just kind of spaced it out this spring. I’ve never grown them before, but if I’m going to start producing my own fruit, it seems kind of silly to not have a strawberry patch.

OK. Time to wake the kids and head off into our Monday. Here’s to not letting it eat me alive.

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