I planted the tomatoes today.
That particular job took about ten minutes; but it took six hours to get there.
Our garden boxes had become old and decrepit, so last year I dismantled them in preparation for a new layout this year. After looking at the soil this spring, I had the bright idea that maybe the time had come to actually grow the plants in the ground rather than put beds over what was there and fill them with decent dirt.
I say it was a bright idea because it seemed so at the time. Two days later, I hope I made the right call. Under those top 4 inches of dearly-won new topsoil, my old friend Gray Clay was still deeply entrenched. Pun intended.
Though it didn't feel quite so funny when I was chiseling...er, digging it out.
I wanted everything to look very neat and straight in the kitchen garden area, so I marked a running straight line that will eventually be the fence 16 feet away from our south wall.
Sounds simple, right? Not so. It's been so long since I had reason to use all the mathematical tools that go into figuring out something like this my skills have nearly rusted away. About the fifth time I checked the line and found it one inch off, I decided I was going to have to get out the algebra and geometry again.
Then I got the line straight and decided nah....
I think I still need to have Dad check the line with me before we do any digging for fence posts, though. That's a lot of work to do only to look at it later and say, "it's not square" like I did with the trellis a few weeks ago.
At any rate, after putting in stakes and running a tight string between them to mark the fence, I used that as the baseline to lay out the garden. I measured five feet in so we could have four-foot square beds with one foot behind and two in between. We have too many plants in our plant refuge out there to make enough space for all the beds (eventually there will be five) and Mom objected to me moving the daylilies now. They wouldn't bloom, she pointed out. So I avoided the daylilies and the irises that are currently blooming and laid out only two of the beds right in the middle where nothing else was in the way. I dug off and put aside the top four inches of good dirt and got to work on the clay. I dug it one spade deep and chopped and broke up the chunks of clay so they were reasonably loose, then added peat moss, compost, and composted manure (come on, guys, it's just nice black dirt at this point. That's all it smells like: nice black dirt!). Some more turning and chopping and mixing, then I added garden lime, blood meal, potash, and bone meal. The lime is because our soil is acidic - 5.5 - 6.0 - and most vegetables like a PH (acid-to-alkaline ratio) of 6.0 - 7.0. After that I put the topsoil back on and mixed it in.
Tired yet? I sure am.
Then I marked a one-foot grid across the top of the beds with stakes and string. I'd really like to follow the Square Foot Gardening method properly, but I don't have enough beds yet to grow enough tomatoes by that method since you can only grow four tomatoes per bed. One of our beds will look right, but the other one will just be full of tomatoes. We are growing Goliath (which, oddly enough, is a compact tomato plant that only gets to be about 3 feet tall. It apparently makes up for it in the tomatoes, which are supposed to be a monster 12 ounces), Hungarian Pink, and a type of canning tomato I chose because of it's reputed high yield but can't for the life of me remember the name of.
After that I de-thistled (and thought about Adam most of the time). And that was my day. Besides making brownies twice because I was making some for Mark and was tired enough to substitute baking soda for baking powder. As with all other instances of this rookie mistake, it turned out not to be an acceptable substitution. The brownies puffed way too high, refused to cook until set in the middle, then collapsed down to a liquidy 1/4 inch. There was no way to put frosting on them and still get them out of a pan.
Oh well. Anne still reigns as the best brownie maker in the house and this is just further evidence!
That particular job took about ten minutes; but it took six hours to get there.
Our garden boxes had become old and decrepit, so last year I dismantled them in preparation for a new layout this year. After looking at the soil this spring, I had the bright idea that maybe the time had come to actually grow the plants in the ground rather than put beds over what was there and fill them with decent dirt.
I say it was a bright idea because it seemed so at the time. Two days later, I hope I made the right call. Under those top 4 inches of dearly-won new topsoil, my old friend Gray Clay was still deeply entrenched. Pun intended.
Though it didn't feel quite so funny when I was chiseling...er, digging it out.
I wanted everything to look very neat and straight in the kitchen garden area, so I marked a running straight line that will eventually be the fence 16 feet away from our south wall.
Sounds simple, right? Not so. It's been so long since I had reason to use all the mathematical tools that go into figuring out something like this my skills have nearly rusted away. About the fifth time I checked the line and found it one inch off, I decided I was going to have to get out the algebra and geometry again.
Then I got the line straight and decided nah....
I think I still need to have Dad check the line with me before we do any digging for fence posts, though. That's a lot of work to do only to look at it later and say, "it's not square" like I did with the trellis a few weeks ago.
At any rate, after putting in stakes and running a tight string between them to mark the fence, I used that as the baseline to lay out the garden. I measured five feet in so we could have four-foot square beds with one foot behind and two in between. We have too many plants in our plant refuge out there to make enough space for all the beds (eventually there will be five) and Mom objected to me moving the daylilies now. They wouldn't bloom, she pointed out. So I avoided the daylilies and the irises that are currently blooming and laid out only two of the beds right in the middle where nothing else was in the way. I dug off and put aside the top four inches of good dirt and got to work on the clay. I dug it one spade deep and chopped and broke up the chunks of clay so they were reasonably loose, then added peat moss, compost, and composted manure (come on, guys, it's just nice black dirt at this point. That's all it smells like: nice black dirt!). Some more turning and chopping and mixing, then I added garden lime, blood meal, potash, and bone meal. The lime is because our soil is acidic - 5.5 - 6.0 - and most vegetables like a PH (acid-to-alkaline ratio) of 6.0 - 7.0. After that I put the topsoil back on and mixed it in.
Tired yet? I sure am.
Then I marked a one-foot grid across the top of the beds with stakes and string. I'd really like to follow the Square Foot Gardening method properly, but I don't have enough beds yet to grow enough tomatoes by that method since you can only grow four tomatoes per bed. One of our beds will look right, but the other one will just be full of tomatoes. We are growing Goliath (which, oddly enough, is a compact tomato plant that only gets to be about 3 feet tall. It apparently makes up for it in the tomatoes, which are supposed to be a monster 12 ounces), Hungarian Pink, and a type of canning tomato I chose because of it's reputed high yield but can't for the life of me remember the name of.
After that I de-thistled (and thought about Adam most of the time). And that was my day. Besides making brownies twice because I was making some for Mark and was tired enough to substitute baking soda for baking powder. As with all other instances of this rookie mistake, it turned out not to be an acceptable substitution. The brownies puffed way too high, refused to cook until set in the middle, then collapsed down to a liquidy 1/4 inch. There was no way to put frosting on them and still get them out of a pan.
Oh well. Anne still reigns as the best brownie maker in the house and this is just further evidence!
4 comments:
I must say, I think I shall enjoy our vegtables and fruit a lot this year and knowing all the work that went into them ;)
Poor Michelle! I believe this is what Anne S. would call a 'Jonah' day. :D And I may reign yet as supreme brownie maker but you may recall a certain incident with...well, I'm sure you can fill in all the blanks....:D
You know the first skirt pattern I ever drafted I thought about the same thing about geometry and algebra, though I hadn't gotten to them yet. ;D I made the front skirt a flat triangle instead of a conical one, if that makes any sense, and it was a flop. I had to trim so much off the edges to make it right that the skirt ended up mid-calf instead of ankle length.
Too bad your soil is so much clay. Maybe you should build a compost bin and put lawn clipping and leaves and biodegradables into it so that you can have some better soil to work with for next year. We planted our garden maybe three weeks ago. We also planted tomatos. This year we tried a new approach. We layed corrigated cardboard over our whole garden and cut holes through where we wanted to plant our shoots. Fortunately we can get free compost mulch from SOCRA. It's for the citizens of Oakland County. The county receives grass clippings and other junk, and churns it all with big machines. It is turned into mulch. We fill up our U-haul trailer and haul it to our property for fresh nitrogen rich soil.
I hope we shall have many vegetables to enjoy ;). Now if only there's a solution to the raspberries...I'm going to try watering them this year and see if that helps.
No, I don't believe it's what Anne would've called a Jonah day because it was actually very pleasant and I feel quite a bit got accomplished. And the brownies...I was laughing over them even right when I realized what I'd done. It's not like they're hard to replace!
I'm afraid I don't remember any incidents with you making brownies other than you really are a closet brownie-batter fan and you like to undercook them so we have brownie pudding to eat with spoons *chuckle*. Which tastes much better than the baking soda/powder mixup, especially with ice cream.
Maybe we should just do algebra with Hope and keep her company. It's not like it would hurt anything. We might even learn something. Maybe. Possibly.
At some point I intend to create a compost bin, but Dad's stipulation is that you can't see the compost bin from the street. Considering this is a corner lot, it therefore follows that the fence will have to go up before the compost bin!
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