Like much of the normally colder part of the country, we've had an extremely mild winter and some crazy warm weather for the past week or so. This meant that the soil was actually dried out and ready to till. In a normal year, there would be standing water in parts of the garden right now. But when I dug up the last of the leeks yesterday, the soil was fairly dry, and so I informed A. that his time had come with the tiller.
The tiller had an overhaul this winter and was all ready to go. So was A. And so was Cubby. The whole family trooped out the garden to watch the miraculous machine in action. And it was miraculous. With one pass, that tiller reduced our already-weedy and compacted soil to plantable material within half an hour. For the whole (HUGE) garden. It was awesome.
I celebrated by planting lettuce, spinach, and radishes. A. celebrated by broadcasting oats all over the majority of the garden as a cover crop to fight back the weeds. Cubby celebrated by touching the scorching-hot muffler on the tiller and burning his finger.
Whoopsy.
But an ice cube for the finger helped with that little problem, and Cubby quite enjoyed jamming bamboo stakes into the ground for me as row markers. A. was extremely proud of his machine, and I was extremely pleased at the prospect of planting the whole garden without any hand digging this year.
Happiness all around.
With the way the weather is going this year, it won't be long before the carrots and beets and things go in. I need to start my tomato seeds any time now; the MiL will be going soon to pick up our seed potatoes; and before you know it, there will be piles of sheep-shit straw in the garden awaiting spreading.
Oh, and the shearer is coming this morning. Does it get anymore exciting than this? Not at Blackrock.
5 comments:
Gardens are a lot of work - especially on the scale you do it - but oh, the flavor and nutritional value of home grown food. I envy you.
I'm glad someone is getting plants in the ground! In SE Missouri it's so wet we can't even walk in the garden without sinking, let alone get a tiller in there!
Speaking of tilling ... Have you seen the short "Boundin'" that comes with the DVD of "The Incredibles"? If you haven't, check it out: http://www.metatube.com/en/videos/38424/Boundin-Pixar-HD-Short-Film-Walt-Disney/
Doh! I meant "Speaking of shearing".
Hell yes! Our weather has been warm, too, but it's supposed to rain all weekend, so my planting parade waits another week or so. Is it bad to plant seeds in the rain? I'm considering it.
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