Wart Doin?

We're keepin' our heads down and pluggin' away at the spring work. Glad for the new head space of no opening day, I seem to be working faster and harder even, just wish my lungs would keep up.

North Garden will be turning into my cut flower and or bouquet garden. I won't be changing the name 'cause in a year or two it is possible that I might change it to something else. For now, because of the soil we have built here it will be where I sow carrot and parsnip seed. But I think carrots and parsnips could look really cool in an arrangement, so I don't think that is fudging on the rules at all, besides they're not really rules, more like guidelines really.

Because Dirt is such a wise man and has come up with the idea for us to have one central killer compost area just inside the pasture gate partitioned off by ecology blocks, we are eliminating all our little compost piles. The girls are sifting through this one right now, using Dirt's and my old sod sifter from when we were first married and gardening new spaces together.

I'm a cold compost-er, I just throw it on as it comes, everything, I don't turn, I don't mess, so to keep the air that the aerobic microbes need to munch it all up, I mindfully toss in enough stuff the likes of this. I find it easier to sift a compost pile when all is said and done than to turn and toss, wet and fuss, and check its temperature all the time. Economy model mother, economy model gardener.

This particular compost pile was started when this garden was started and its true purpose was to cover the ginormous rock that lay on the edge of center in the garden. The rock seems to have moved, and shrunk, odd, very odd, Do you think I am so good that I can compost a giant rock?

It appears that I am, because this is all that is left of it and this wasn't even under the pile any more. Mind you, we had metal T-posts sunk around the edges of the rock, they held up palettes that held in the compost and they marked the edge of the rock for when Dirt came in with the tiller.

So Dear Reader, I am not of my rocker or rock, I know of what I speak! This rock has rolled, unless steel T-post go pogo stick at night, and in unison!

The area that was once a rock and then a compost pile is going to be scraped flat along with adjoining spaces, level with the major pathways. This area will become a table and chairs area, to set and ponder the flowers. I'm thinkin' I want to have the table and chairs bar height so that it can also be an outdoor work area to do up bouquets and such right in the garden.

Here's a quick shot of my little tulip crop, these were just babies last year, most weren't large enough to bloom even and just tiny buds on one or two. I need to come and give them a little foliar spray to boost their nutrition.

The lettuces and mustards are getting spread out this week by the girls, planted equidistance apart. I don't thin well, when I come across a seedling that looks poorly, I always find a spot for it.

Planting out the onion plants has been a challenge in that regard, it is hard to toss the silly little ones that most likely won't grow nice.

Oh by the way Dear Reader, I just teleported you out to Market Garden at the north end of the pastures down by the highway. Just beyond the tilled soil is the old pumpkin patch, we've decided to create a buffer zone hedge row sort of area. It is seventy feet from fence to fence and we'll come in quite a ways from the highway fence just to make sure it all stays, all our work, nature can then have the space between the highway and our hedge row.

A place where people, determined to drive while sleeping can fly into with their trucks and not make me too crazy. Or if the highway department ever widens the now well traveled highway, well be ready for it.

Fruit trees, nut trees, flowery berry laden bushes for our little flighty friends and such, we'll most likely get to that in the fall or late winter. Bet and I might toss some wild flower seed in there for now just for the fun of it.

Here's a better view of the onions, the first crop to go in our Market Garden. They could be bigger that would be nice, but they have been on hold a little too long. Don't know what this crew was thinkin' last fall when we knew we were going to come over sometimes our brains are mush.

But all is well, they seem to be bouncing back just fine, our onions might be on the small side this year but what the heck we've planted about a thousand so far and are only half way through, so we'll have onions.

Bet and I perfected the furrow thing, I don't often plant in furrows so I forget often what really needs to happen. The dirt, soil, needs to stay, be pressed a bit to squish out some of the air, and an impression made for the seed or seedling. I usually make little holes, equidistance apart for optimum space usage. But I wasn't into making two-thousand little holes by hand.

But pulling a hoe across the soil to make a furrow causes soil loss at the edge of the bed. So we used the outside edge of our hands to just press in the furrow lines. It went way quicker, the soil stayed put and all is well.

Thought I'd show you a bit of how we are making the beds in Market Garden, not too different from how I always put together a first time bed.

Bet and Dirt had gone over the whole area seventy by four-hundred feet, with the pto tiller behind Orange Tractor. But due to time and hard sod and precious worms and such, we did not opt to till it to a fine powder, not even close really.

We mark out the beds with stakes and baling twined, scoop the busted sod and the soil from the path areas, heap it on the bed areas and then because the sod is still fairly clumpy and in need of being broke we just put straight barn cleanings right on the top of the soddy soil.

That straw you see is well soaked in urine and lots of dung is in there so it will rot in no time and it will break down the sod. That of course makes for a bit less nutrition available to the plant so we'll be foliar spraying with manure tea a lot this year.

Next year these beds will be ready to handle carrots and parsnips. With all this work going into the prep of the beds and changing up the focus of the other garden areas some ideas have changed quite a bit, but heck Dear Reader, you knew I was queen of change didn't you?

Well, I got some stuff a callin' my name, I'd love to stay and chat, let my lungs rest a bit longer, but my brain has gotta get out and do some real work, But you're right Dear Reader, I do need to keep better records than I have in the past, it's time, and all this plannin' and stuff takes up a bit of writin' space.

Have an excellent week, we've got a pile of things on our wanna do list so we won't be wandering the streets and carousing this weekend, maybe next weekend. Dear Reader, stay well, let's stay tuned to the Holy Spirit channel instead of the ol' flesh and we'll get on down the road lots better together.

By the way, This was the post that wouldn't load from Live Writer and has started all this shenanigans with getting a dot com and WordPress-ing it. But I think the problem was with my internet connection at my house.

Oh, and, Wart Doin' is a grandboyism for, what are you doing?

Oh yeah, and another thing, I'm now found at http://www.itsthedirt.com/ Plain and simple, itsthedirt.com. It is a WordPress blog on my own domain, looking forward to where this new step takes me. It is still a little rough but I thought maybe you'd like to watch my progess over there.