I had spent a good hour writing a blog about all the work Karen and I put in the yad and garden the other day, and it has disappeared into the ether despite our making sure to save it. So here is my abbreviated redact:
Friday (April 24) was the only day of the week it seemed we'd have decent weather for working in the garden. It had been relatively sunny, and the forecast was for highs around 82(!) and windy. I took a half day off work and was out the door by 8 am with my gloves on.
First I tackled a long awaited and on-going project, filling in and seeding the trench area in the backyard. After the water and electrical lines were dug and laid last Fall, it was backfilled with dirt and packed down. But we needed to wait and see how much it would sink after the frost went out this Spring. Thankfully it didn't sink too far in too many places, but I still had some backfilling to do before I could lay grass seed down. I'd been bringing a few wagon loads of dirt over from behind the pump house as time after work allowed, but the weather didn't cooperate and much of the time my dirt pile was a pile of mud. Finally, Friday morning I was able to load the last of the necessary fill into the area behind the house and start tamping. Then I put up a fence to keep the dogs off of it. This is a long trench, and cuts all the way across the backyard, so I have to do this in sections so the dogs can still access the rest of the yard. I raked it smooth, put down my seed and mulched.
Then I headed up toward the asparagus bed and started digging post holes while Karen hit the big lower garden (formerly the old garden, pig pen, and lawn)and started planting onion sets. These are basically baby onion plants and give us a jump on the growing season. We planted three varieties, a white, a yellow, and a red onion named Red Zeppelin! Hellyeah!
The post hole digging was going very slowly in our heavy soil. Karen asked for my help in the big garden which I was more than happy to provide. We dug, raked, pulled sod clods, smoothed, marked, planted and identified two 30 ft. rows of onions, carrots, beets, lettuce, spinach, and potatoes!
Speaking of potatoes, I have a bit to say about our spuds this year. First, we ordered a few varieties from an outfit back in Maine called Pinetree Garden Seeds. I've dealt with them in the past, and always had good service and results from the seeds I ordered from them. I particularly liked that they sold smaller sized packets than most other places, because who really needs a thousand beet seeds?? I had never ordered potato sets from them, but I didn't think anything of it. We did get all the seed packets we ordered in a very timely fashion, to be put into the laundry room awaiting their time for planting. The spuds hadn't arrived, but we weren't concerned since planting time was many weeks off. However, as of two weeks ago, we still hadn't gotten our potatoes from Pinetree. Karen called and called, finally getting a hold of a live person, and was told
"Oh, you wanted those now?"
Ummm.... were you thinking we wanted them for the fourth of July? In doing some searching, Karen discovered quite a few complaints about Pinetree's customer service and shipping delays. Hmph. The phone call happened two weeks ago, and we still don't have our potatoes from Pinetree! You can bet we won't be ordering any more non-seed items from them. Maybe even not seeds. There are lots of alternatives.
We had picked up one bag of fingerling potatoes locally at Jung's since Pinetree didn't offer that variety. I picked it up several weeks back knowing it may be out of stock if I waited too long. The risk with this was that my storage conditions are less than perfect, and our seed potatoes started sprouting. A little sprouting isn't such a bad thing, but ours sprouted a LOT. Many of the new shoots broke off in trying to prise them out of their net bag. For those who don't know, when planting potatoes, one cuts a spud into sections containing two or three eyes, so you can harvest more from one potato. Also for those who didn't know, and this included me, potato seedlings and sprouts are tasty to Welsh Springer Spaniels. I went into the house to fetch the camera, and by the time I walked back out onto the porch, I caught Dottie munching some of my spuds up. Sigh.
But at least we had this batch, so we dug up long trenches and put them in. It was exhausting work in the heat. Though I'm never a very heat-tolerant variety of human, I especially don't do well on the first 80 degree day of the year after a long cool winter. I need hardening off just like my tomato plants. Luckily for me by this time, it was time for me to get ready to go in to work, so I got to hit the shower.
Karen being the trooper that she is continued working in the garden. Then she went to town and did the shopping, cleaned the house, made dinner and a batch of homemade sourdough bread. By the time I got back home after work, she was back outside finishing up. She's a keeper.
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