Guardian of the Garden

My garden is slow going this year. Which is still, sadly, an improvement on last year.

I’ve turned over four and 1/2 beds, down below the barn conveniently next door to the manure pile. This is a first time garden, in rocky Virginia clay, so the digging was not an easy task. The full beds are about 3×4 feet, with paths between so nothing will be out of reach. It may have made sense to make the paths large enough to mow, but that seemed a waste of the smallish space so I’ve laid scrapwood down over parts to try to kill the grass off, we’ll see if that works.

The actual planting part of the garden is not progressing as well as hoped. I started what seemed a very optimistically large number of plants in egg cartons several weeks ago, but very few are looking promising at this point. Some very nice little watermelons mysteriously died off last week, and only about half the tomatoes germinated at all. One bed was planted directly and there are swiss chard and collard seedlings sprouted up, but they may not be long for this world unless I can convince someone to help me with the deer fence building in the very near future.

I’ve decided that having turned over and composted the beds should be satisfaction enough for this year, if it comes down to that. Small victories, I am learning, must be savored even more in these baby-turning-into-toddler days.

 

 

 

 

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