Planting, Planting, Planting

This weekend we got a little crazy. We bought some miller's gardenbox mix, composted steer manure, and sta-garden soil, tossed it all on a tarp mixed it around, divided it among our 6 beds and raked it into the top 2 inches. So contrary to my last post we did add something to each bed, about 1.5 cuft of mixed soil/compost.

We also bought two Dupont Frost blankets so far I think they are the best early season addition we could have made. the blankets are rumored to protect plants from frost down to 28 degrees and maybe thick enough to protect down to 0 degrees and by sprinkling water over the blanket possibly below 0 degrees.

We shall see how our early season test subjects fair.

We altered some of our plan, and planted almost 2 and a half beds. Peas, blue potatoes, red onions, kohlrabi, Romain lettuce, 4 more tomatoes, and swiss chard.

Still to do:

Fix drip irrigation sprinklers

I think a new sprinkler box and another sprinkler valve to isolate the garden is in order, in addition to the low pressure adaptor

Get a flat nose shovel (got two for a good deal at the DI)

Look into a compost shredder/grinder - considering building one out of an electric mower and 1/2" diamond pattern metal screen

add amendments to garden beds and till the soil (amendments will be delayed until fall or next spring)

spray garden soil with copper soap to kill fungal pathogens (will wait until all plants are planted)

Fill hole to transplant pear tree, 15ft north of current location, with compost and mix with soil.

transplant and prune pear tree

move garden bed 6 20 ft south of current location where there would be more sun (or add one bed and use bed 6 only for shade tolerant veggies like tomatoes and cold weather crops) decision was made to leave to bed at the current location as a test since the apricot tree was felled last summer so there will be more sun then last year.

plant tomatoes and other cold weather plants in wall-o-water's Used all 6 Wall-O-Water's we have

install trellises on the beds