Adventure in the Garden

I have written about my desire to be largely retired from homesteading. Nevertheless, I would like to have a small garden this year. Last week I finally headed out to the garden to see what I could accomplish. My husband usually has the entire garden tilled up by now, and probably has planted peas and potatoes, at the very least. But he is struggling with shoulder pain this spring (and has been for quite some time), and not enough energy, so no tilling has happened. The weeds are a foot high by now, and if he ever does decide to till, he will have to run the weedeater first.

Yeah, this is a sea of weeds!

Right now he is thoroughly preoccupied with cutting up firewood for next winter; he wants to get it done early in case he has to have rotator cuff surgery. When he is focused on one job, other jobs fall by the wayside. Therefore the tilling has not happened. Since he is hurting, it might not happen this year. Or I'll get someone else to do it!

Here he is with his firewood project.

Nevertheless, I went out to see what I could do. I dug the weeds out of two 4'x4' beds and planted my gladiolus bulbs in one of them.

Here is Ulysses, supervising my project and inspecting the garden bed. (And using it for a toilet.)

I discovered some volunteer lettuce in three places so dug them all up carefully and put them in the same bed with the glads. I set lay raspberry canes across the bed to discourage the cats from digging.

I pulled some weeds in the garlic that was planted last fall, and thinned the volunteer radishes. I think my husband let a couple of radish plants go to seed last year and then forgot to harvest the seed. This is another raised bed, where I found the radishes and most of the lettuce. You can see a couple of impressive weeds in there, too.

Last fall my husband dug up our huge, overgrown rhubarb plant. It had been there for several years, and it needed to be thinned out. This is the part we kept. It is looking just lovely!

It was very late in the fall when we did that, and we just left the extra rhubarb lying there in the garden all winter. This spring it put up little sprouts all over, even though it was just lying on top of the ground. I whacked it up into manageable pieces, gave a few away, and put the rest on the burn pile.

The final task I tackled was to move stray raspberry starts back into the actual raspberry patch. It is behind the rope in the background of this photo. The grass and dandelions have really grown thickly in the raspberry patch. I suppose they like all the watering we do there. I'm trying to dig up some of the grass and weeds as I transplant the starts.

Some of my herbs are in the foreground of the photo: oregano, lemon balm, and apple mint. They grow beautifully, and I need to remember to go out and get some and use it more often!