I began work in the garden today. Thanks to the March winds, there was little work in raking the leaves off -- but I did enlarge the compost heap noticeably. There were a lot of leaves in the wind-shadow of the heap, and I still haven't got that raked away enough to start digging out dirt for the potato hills. (I have some sprouted potatoes in the "root cellar" under the bench in the garage.)
Then I pushed the cultivator around with the slicing hoe attached. The soil is in good condition and there were very few weeds. Dave cleaned the garage recently, so it was easy to get the cultivator down -- I did use the stepladder because the furrowing attachment, the five-tine cultivator, and the spare spike were lying on top of it.
I have been picking parsley for weeks, and the garlic chives could be harvested if I were sufficiently desperate for a taste of green. One rhubarb leaf is up.
I should cut the rue to the ground before it leafs out. There is one rhubarb leaf visible. No sign of life in the asparagus bed.
I planted the potatoes yesterday, and all but nine of the multipliers today.
The garlic chives are half a foot tall, and look succulent.
The multipliers came up a few days ago. Either one of the potatoes is up or there's a weed in the hill; it was too cold to stop to check. A squash-looking thing came up in a hill about a week ago.
After cultivating the garden, I picked four asparagus spears. There are more that will be ready soon.
Some of the ferns are up. I hope that I remember that the daffodils need dividing when they are ready to dig.
I've been eating garlic chives, parsley, oregano, and winter onion.
It snowed yesterday, and it's still on the ground this morning. I hope it protected my potatoes and onions from the freeze.
I pushed the cultivator around and pulled most of the weeds from most of the rows. I gave only cursory attention to the row of winter onions that I plan to dig up and eat. None of the clumps in the permanent row are very big.
The second picking of asparagus is all shriveled. I'm hoping that it was hurt by the freeze. The potatoes are all up, and the onions and garlics are doing fine.
There are a lot of out-of-line garlic plants that I need to use up.
Today, I dug a clump of the main row of winter onions to get some big enough to cut up onto hamburgers. This will be the last digging; bulbil stalks are starting to form. There are still little onions in the row where I planted bulbils last year, some of them needing a couple more weeks to get big enough to eat.
The asparagus is doing fine, but not demanding to be blanched and frozen yet.
One hill of potatoes still shows no sign of sprouting; when I said that they were all up, I must have seen weed leaves. Some mustard is showing, but if I want a crop, I'm going to have to plant some. Tomorrow is supposed to be wet, and I have three kinds of mustard seed in the spice bag in the freezer. Garden also needs cultivating.
I desperately need new retaining walls around the raised beds, but have no idea what they are called, so I can't buy them on line. The staff at Menard's directed me to window boxes on legs.
There is no safe and polite place to leave a bike at Lowe's, and though the aisles are wide enough to take it in with me, it's very distracting to have to hold it upright at all times.
Froogle says says I should try Walmart.
Yesterday I began digging out the edging around the rhubarb bed, and tried to pry out the milkweed plant.
Past time to dig up the narcissus; I hope the leaves are still on.
I see no sign of first-year parsley in the herb bed. I might find some when I get out all the weeds.
Today I dug up the feverfew plant and put it on the south side of the house next to the other feverfew plant, then planted a row of five parsley plants where it had been. I wanted to buy one each of flat and curled, but the curled came only in sets of four. All the plants are hurting from too long in the pots, particularly the tiny pots of curled parsley.
In the process, I potted several kenilworth ivy plants and pulled some weeds, which makes the bed look neater.
No progress on finding a replacment for the rotting walls of the flower beds. I'm kinder holding out for walls with holes for kenilworth ivy, which is fairly easy because I haven't found any solid walls either.
I need to thin the garlic chives.
I'm still getting bulbils off the winter onions. Those that I planted show no sign of coming up.
It's time to dig the potatoes.
I planted some Indian mustard seed between the potatoes and the multiplier onions. Some of it appears to have sprouted. I need to get on with planting a succession of mustard.
Still haven't planted the next succession of mustard. The first planting is up, and I think I saw some true leaves while cultivating.
Ran the five-tine cultivator all over the garden. I didn't pop up any onions or potatoes, but I uprooted a lot of weeds, which I threw on the compost heap.
I also cultivated the place where I put the seed heads of the giant garlic last summer, after pulling enough weeds to be sure that none of the seeds had sprouted. There was one flat-leaved plant, but I tasted it and it was grass. Knew it was grass from the way it grew, but I wanted to be sure.
When the cultivating was done, I cut off the fattest bulbils of the winter onions and planted them in the place where the seed heads didn't sprout. I cut off the little bulbils and brought them into the house, leaving their stems to mark where the big bulbils were buried.
When I pull the weeds out of the winter onions, the garden will be pretty much up-to-date, because I don't want to plant mustard until the newly- emptied rows have been cultivated at least once more.
The multipliers are on newspapers in the garage, and the garlic has been hanging on the line long enough to bring inside.
I must remember not to plant mustard in places where I want to plant garlic.
The catnip that volunteered in the raised beds is looking a little chewed on. I think the chewed- est plan will ripen seed; the others have not flowered.
Augh! When I went to check on that, I found that one of the three patches had vanished entirely, and they were the nicest-looking plants. I thinned that patch by cutting out one plant and bringing it in to Al, so it isn't a total loss.
The one plant in the herb bed is chewed off on one side, but will live if not attacked again. The two remaining in the strawberry bed are the one that is setting seed, and a small healthy one sheltered under one of its leaves.
***
On the way back into the house after weeding the winter onions, I paused to pull a weed out of the strawberry bed, and saw a fine, healty catnip plant growing next to the lavender. Perhaps the scent of the lavender hides it.
The giant garlic also needs weeding, but I'm going to dig it up in a few days, so I'll leave that to the five-tine hoe.
While weeding, I realized that the part of Dave's row that he didn't use is ready to plant mustard in.
***
So I took the hoe out, dug a furrow, and planted a cubit or so. This time it was black mustard seed from the Spice Merchant. The first planting is brown mustard seed from Bomy Singh. Next time I'll take the mustard from the Kroger can, but I think that that is Spice Merchant too, as the large-print can was discontinued a long time ago.
I cut the garlics off the stems, which are still hanging on the line, and they are in a cardboard tray in the garage.
Al is sniffing around the multipliers; time to clean and box them for the winter.
***
I dug a wheelbarrow of dirt, filled in holes in the herb bed, dug up some outlying Italian oregano and planted it in the trench where I took the edging out, and dumped the remainder near the row where I dug up the multipliers.
I hedgeclippered the grass the lawnmower can't reach about a quarter of the way around the garden.
The kenilworth ivy I potted seems to be doing well. I must dig more and plant it in the fern bed.
A landscape timber fell off the strawberry bed. I was able to put it back on, but I really need some way to replace the retaining walls. I can imagine things that would work, but don't know the magic names to buy them.
Maybe I can drive ornamental fence posts close to the crumbing walls?
I dug the giant garlic, hosed it off, and hung it on the clothesline. I also harvested, hosed, and hung the Indiana garlics that I missed when I was performing abortions. I plan to pickle the bulbils and plant the cloves.
It seems to me that the garlic chives should be blooming along about now.
And they *were* about to send up flower buds. So far I haven't let any get too mature to be good. Helps that I realized that the flower stalks will keep for a long time if cut into small pieces and mixed with real yogurt.
Department of "well, duh!": Wikipedia pointed out that the same rule applies to garlic and giant garlic that applies to multiplier onions: if you want big bulbs, plant small ones.
I picked a flowering plant about four inches tall out of the row of Indian-mustard seed. None of the other seedlings are big enough to eat. Such true leaves as they have hardly show. The black- mustard seed is more promising. There is some volunteer mustard to pick.
I didn't haul dirt today or yesterday. Perhaps I should run the five-tine hoe through what I've already hauled. There's a lot of broken eggshell in what I'm hauling.
I think I emptied the mustard-seed can into the garlic pickles.
I went out to get a bunch of garlic-chive flower stalks for my breakfast, and found only one. I think the season is over.
I still have no yellow mustard seed. Spice Merchants turned up missing when I went to buy some. I put brown mustard seed into today's garlic pickles.
I hauled a bucket of water to the pepper plants. Most of it ran off; I must re-arrange the dirt.
I planted the giant garlic and the garlic today. The giant garlic was all the basal bulbils, with one big round bulb to mark each end of the row, and a few cloves near the end marks.
There are a couple of feet of winter onion bulbils at the south end of the row, and I filled out the north end with garlic bulbils. Then I planted garlic at the north end of the easternmost row, where some winter onions were planted north of the pepper plants.
Levelling out the lumpy dirt I hauled in after harvesting the garlics was easier than I expected. I first ran the five-tine cultivator over it, then raked it flat, removing a lot of leaves and other debris in the process.
This planting is rather late; I pulled a volunteer garlic scallion and ate it with my bedtime snack.
The bulbs and cloves don't appear to have begun deteriorating yet. But I don't think I'll eat all of the leftovers before they do start to spoil. When they do, I'll bury them in the herb bed and eat them next spring.
Picked a handful of red jalapeños, put two in the squash stuffing, cleaned and froze the rest.
Also pulled up a misplaced giant garlic and chopped it for the stuffing.
I should run the cultivator, but the garden is full of leaves. Also, it's going to rain the rest of the week.
I plan to leave the cayenne (which is what I'm calling the long thin peppers that lost their label) on the bush until they dry or there's a threat of frost.
We had our first snow on Sunday and most things are wilted or dead, but there are still thyme, oregano, and parsley in the raised bed. I presume that the marjoram is also pickable, but didn't brush leaves aside to see.
Picked the red cayenne a while back, but haven't thought to look at the plant since the snow.
We got our first *real* snow yesterday afternoon, starting about an inch before I had to drive to the dentist, and ending just before I started home, after getting the evergreen trees a few flakes past picturesque. The deciduous trees were gorgeous, but I had no leisure to look at them.
While planning breakfast this morning, I realized that I had missed my last chance to pick fresh herbs on Monday, when I bought a head of lettuce and ate a salad to use up the old head. I did eat a sprig of parsley when passing the bed since then.
A raised herb bed is a truly wonderful idea.