Growing Home: Finally got my last 2 gardens planted!

Went up to farm on Friday, with Katherine to plant the gardens. The car was packed with plants! Poor Smokey had to ride on mommies lap! Anyway, we got there we ate, and then I got to tilling right away. The ground was still a bit wetter than I liked in some places, but I wasn't going to risk planting any later! I did the big patch first and tilled in all the mulched horse manure and straw/hay & dirt that I took out of the red barn in the previous weeks. I didn't use any of the baled hay/straw though - just the stuff that was mixed with manure and dirt. Then I tilled the paw-paw patch. I used some of the mulched wood chips from the pile up by the house (the oldest pile - i wanted them as mulched as possible) for mulch - just about 5 loader buckets full. I also had 2 hay bales there that I dropped off a couple weekends ago that I decided to till in. BIG MISTAKE!! DO NOT TRY TO TILL HAY/STRAW BALES into your soil! I had to go over it many times, compressing the soil more each time - grrrr. Finally got the soil to an acceptable state (barely) for planting.

The next day, Saturday, I started planting the big patch. First I put down the black plastic around the borders. This was made more difficult because I did not label or put aside the plastic that I needed so I had to filter through all of my plastic rolls to get it right! Also, of course, I had to reset the end fence. The first thing I planted was greenbeans. I put down a row of bluelake 274 and then a row of tendergreen (? name ?). Then i put in 6 rows of white and yellow sweet corn. I planted both the corn and beans using the earthway seed planter. Everything seemed to work OK, but I felt that the corn was not put down at the rate I thought it should have been. I didn't even use 1/2 lb of seed for those 6 rows! We will see in a week or so when this comes up. I might have to overseed more. Also, because of this I didn't plant any of the pure yellow corn, which Katherine wanted. After the corn was in I started transplanting the tomatoes - 144 of them! It was backbreaking to hoe out the rows - but I thought it was the best way after doing the potatoes that way. So, 4 rows (?) of tomatoes and then my onions (from seed) and then the eggplant were transplanted. Then I popped in some cucumbers, spaghetti squash, summer squash, and butternut squash in the remaining space. Not near as many as I did last year! Also, this year NO pumpkins or sunflowers are going in the patches! I plan on tilling some rows outside of the big patch, but inside the electric fence for the pumpkins and sunflowers. That will be next week - weather and time depending. I really don't need pumpkins or sunflowers - but I want to see how they grow in those conditions. Local farmers warn that deer LOVE sunflowers - so that is why they will be inside the electric fence. In any case, after I finished planting the big patch I did some mowing in the far field - the grass grows so fast there!

OK, so next was the paw-paw patch. I did that the next day to give it more time to dry out. First I put in Kale in two rows along the paw-paw side of the patch because that seemed to be the best soil. I hand planted the kale seed because I didn't have much seed and I wanted it in as perfect as I could! Then I transplanted the cabbages, broccoli and cauliflower together (because they were all mixed together and I lost track of which were which). Then I put in the artichokes partially into the hay mixed soil - we will see! Some of that soil feels like bricks! A couple more seasons and much more organics will bring the soil into a good state - its still pretty 'rough' for a garden. After the artichokes I used the seeder again to plant beets and carrots. The beets were partially going into the hay mixed soil and the seeder couldn't handle that, therefore, I simply skipped over that soil, planting beets in rows on either side of the hay area. The carrots went in next. I forgot were I was and started planting some of the carrots overtop of the Kale! ARGGG! I hope I didn't screw things up too bad. I broadcast dill seed over the hay mixed area since there was really no other way to seed in there.

OK, here are the pictures of the big patch: