Background Work

At the end of October I dug and dug my vegetable garden plot with the only tools I had—an old army shovel, a plastic trowel and a hand cultivator and my oh so sore back.  We had long since given up our lawn tools as we moved from house to apartment and I was reluctant to replace them since we will move again.  Besides, the owners of the house had had a vegetable garden on that very spot so there weren’t a lot of weeds.  How hard could it be?  Yellow clay hard.

I finally gave in and bought a full-sized shovel.  It was still hard work but not as back-breaking.  I happily sowed my cool-weather crop seeds: kale, spinach and Swiss chard.  I was excited as sprouts broke the surface of the soil.  But wait, what do such seedlings look like?  Hmm…the ones in my online image search kind of looked like what was emerging from my garden…Alas, after a few weeks, I realized that my seedlings would have been much taller than these sprawling specimens and weed seeds must have come in the bags of “good top soil” and blanketed my hard won garden.

Later, I read that I could plant a little earlier if I warmed my soil by covering it with black plastic—my soil and the weeds, which would perhaps be weakened and easier to remove.  Apparently, late October was too late for my seeds to germinate this extra cold winter.

Wonderfully warm and inspiring weather last week provided opportunity to dig again, to start fresh.  The good news was that my labor last autumn was not in vain, because of my hard work, the soil now turns easily.  I added some black and brown “gold” (compost and sphagnum) to amend the soil, turned it under and added a brick path to keep from compressing the soil. 

                                      

It’s ready to plant at last.  But now it’s too late to plant cool weather crops again.  No problem, I have an heirloom tomato plant and some lettuce plants that can go in when the rain, rain goes away.