Daley Ponderings

 I've been mentioning my garden doings on Serina's blog and in private emails with her, and I thought I'd compile and post the relevant info here.

March 15:

Whoohoo! I just placed my order with fedco, and we’ve been preparing our squares out front. Jon just helped me finish de-sodding them this afternoon. I have an order for coarse vermiculite coming next week to a local nursery, and we’ll be on our way! It is so nice to be outside again, in the warm sunshine. Even though I was (one of the few who?) wasn’t really ready for winter to be over, I am very happy that spring has arrived.

March 16:

This is my order.  Some first choices were out of stock, and some seeds we have left over, and broccoli I bought from a local store since I need to start it indoors before he order is likely to come.  We're doing five 4x4 blocks of square foot gardening, with vertical frames on four of them. And the sunflowers along the front of our porch.  I'm also planning on buying tomato plants this year, I think I mentioned that before.

We were going to give Jonathan a 2x2 square for his own, and Noah a 1x1, but Jon thought we might as well just do a 4x4 for them together, once we started making the squares.  I am planning on planting the mint in a buried container, to keep it from spreading everywhere.

Provider Bush Green Bean
Sugar Ann Snap Pea
de Bourbonne Pickling Cucumber
Marketmore 76 Slicing Cucumber
Black Zucchini
Saffron Summer Squash
New England Pie Pumpkin
Chioggia Beet
Detroit Dark Red Short Top Beet
Bright Lights Chard
Feherozon Sweet Pepper
Fernleaf Dill
Common Mint
Rosemary
Tashkent Marigold OG
Empress of India Nasturtium
Rocket Mix Snapdragon
Summer Sensation Sunflower

It's been lovely weather here, too, for being outside and working with dirt and worms. (: I was pleasantly surprised to see how many earthworms are already in my dirt.  And I have a hard time keeping Jonathan from putting them on display in places where the poor things will dry out. Noah is on my (and the worms') side, though - he yells at Jonathan, "Home!" and points to the dirt. (:

Today:

After reading Serina's regrets that she did not screen her soil materials, I have decided to screen ours.  So far I am working on the few inches of existing soil that we will mixing our additions into.  It's a lot of work because the soil is clayey and clumpy, and because I'm trying to salvage as many of those lovely earthworms as I can.  I finished one square today and it does look nice.  Jonathan enjoyed raking it smooth with the boys' new little rake.

Jon is wondering if it will be worth it for us to rent a roto-tiller so the clumps are at least a bit smaller and less work for me to sift.

I'm test sprouting our old seeds to make sure they're still good, and if not we'll have to buy replacements.  We wasted several radish seeds and a bunch of carrot seeds when the boys tried to help me when I had to be out of the room for something.