Digging Up The Dirt

This past weekend was a gardening marathon.  Saturday and Sunday my dad and I were out digging up the dirt and getting early plants in the ground.  First off, we didn't dig up the entire garden by hand because that would be crazy!  Sheer death.  Instead we used our trusty rototiller.  Thank god for modern technology.

While the rototiller is much easier, it is no walk in the park.  There is still serious energy involved in steering it, especially when your garden is mostly clay and saturated to the brim with water.  As in sinking into mud and having difficulty getting your food out saturated.  The sloshing and suction noises were very unnatural (and downright disturbing!) to have in a garden.  Alas, we are working with what we got.  And as it is long past time for me to plant my dark greens, we slaved away in the garden to get it ready for planting.

I think the worst part of this early prep was trenching the entire garden.  As I mentioned before, our backyard elevation is beneath the surrounding properties so we get a steady flow and pooling of water whenever it rains.  Which happens a lot in the Spring.  After some bad flooding last year, we decided to dig a ditch around the entire garden and split it in the middle, basically creating raised garden beds and protecting our veggies from unwanted water.  Mucking around in the wet clay, armed with nothing but shovels, we slowly heaved the heavy dirt to allow water to properly drain. I took a giant brownie break after we finished :)

Here's a shot of our chives.  They are growing strong!  I recently used some to top my mashed cauliflower.  First time eating something from the garden in 2015 woot woot!  Anyway, we had to put a metal cage over them because my fat cat likes to lay on top of them.  She also has been trying to use the herb boxes as a litter box.  Not cool.

We planted onion slips this year just to see what happens.  Considering they are in straight up clay, we don't have high hopes, but it's a fun experiment!

This little guy is from last year!  We planted onions on a whim last year and then forgot about them so they stayed in the garden all winter.  Surprisingly they were growing this Spring, so we transplanted them so they are with the rest of our onions and scallions.

Here's a shot of our onion, scallion, beet, and spinach patch.  Again, we aren't expecting much out of the beets because our soil is so hard, however I happen to LOVE beet greens so I'm fine just eating the tops :)  I tried growing spinach two years ago and all that happened was it bolted and grew flowers - not leaves.  As leaves are the point of growing spinach, I was discouraged and didn't grow it last year.  I have since researched and learned that spinach really hates the heat (I had planted it mid-may last time), so I am hoping that by planting it early Spring, I can harvest it before the heat of summer hits.

Ahh - my kale, collard, and chard patches.  Arguably the best part of the garden!  I love my dark leafy greens.  I super extended all these patches this year and have high hopes for all these veggies.  Just a quick tip; kale and collards like to be spaced out with a large diameter between each one so I always find it best to plant them in individual circles while swiss chard doesn't grow quite as big to you can run giant strips of it, leaving space between each strip but not as much room between each plant.

Alright, now for an important thing to remember when planting your garden: if you grew your own seedlings, make sure you let them acclimate to the sun before planting them!!  That means leaving them outside for a few hours a day a week or two before permiantly putting them in the ground.  I was lazy with my kale seedlings, as you can see by the white (and very dead) kale plant on the far left.  Poor little guys fried in the sun!  The middle kale plant was one that came back from last year, so it's doing great, as is the hybrid on the far right.  My aunt sent me three types of kale that I had never heard of, one autumn hybrid, one snowdrop hybrid, and one mistletoe hybrid.  Somehow they are doing great despite me not letting them adjust to the sun.  I'm not complaining.  Overall, I only lost 10 or so plants which when  you have a patch of around 100 is not really a big deal.  Actually I seeded most of my kale so I will simply pull some of the sprouts that I would usually get rid of to leave only one plant per circle and transplant them to the ones that need it.  Easy peasy.

Cabbage anyone?  This year I planted my cabbages much closer together than last year because despite cabbage being a large plant, mine didn't grow near the size I thought they would.  I really think the hard clay had something to do with the baseball sized heads I got last year, however they tasted fine.  To adjust this year I'm going to grow more in the same amount of space.  Hopefully I wind up with a decent amount of cabbage when all is added up.

I leave you today with a very random box of onions.  Why?  I don't actually know, ask my dad.  This is his doing.  I find it hilarious and love how he planted them in a Starbucks box.  Because I often think of onions and coffee?  Anyway, my dad ordered way to many onion slips to plant them all in the garden so I guess he got creative with finding places to put them.  Like an empty Starbucks pod box on the table of our deck :)  I love this stuff.

Later this week we will be planting our flower boxes, and possibly planting a few squash plants and sunflowers.  It all depends on the weather, but so far the extended forecast looks promising and I'm itching to get more in the ground!

Until next time, happy digging in the dirt.

~Margaret