Rambling: More Gardening

So, I don't think I mentioned in my last post that all those square feet were tilled with, y'know, a tiller. A modest-sized electric tiller. I didn't work them all with a shovel and fork.

Now that I've eliminated all of your respect for my work, I offer another garden update all the same. I finally planted the sixteen or so square feet of snap peas that I prepped last time. I prepped another eighty-five square feet for herbs and perennial vegetables, covered it with landscape fabric, and got the herbs started with sixteen chive plants, one per square foot in a four-by-four block. (Well, four plants divided into four each.) I gave that bed nine cubic feet of Farmyard Blend, ten cups of Dr. Earth fertilizer, and a bit more than box of rock phosphate. I hope that the plants are happy. I hope that I didn't overdose with the rock phosphate; it was the recommended dose. (Edited to add: "That bed" meaning the whole eighty-odd square feet, not just the sixteen square feet for the chives. I mention that before someone sends a rescue party for overfertilized chives.)

I'm also noticing creeping blog writer's block, and in fact creeping writer's block in general, so I've resolved that I'm going to eliminate the need to add a picture to my posts, because freakishly that tends to be the roadblock that stops the posting of the post. I dunno why. It's weird.

Over in the Land of Fruit at the other end of the garden, everything seems to be waking up for spring, except for one of the eight blueberry plants; all of its little friends have tiny pink swelling bits, and it's looking sadly dry-stick-like. The next change there will be raspberries, moved from a too-shady corner of the back yard.

I'm debating putting in asparagus. On one hand, it will be two full years before we're supposed to eat any. On the other hand, if I wait a year, it will be three full years before we're supposed to eat any, and surely someday I want to eat homegrown asparagus? I also have stage fright, because of the way that all the books fuss about how Those Plants Will Be There For Twenty Years Aieeee! But that's true of a lot of perennials, so what's all the fuss about? I should just plant some already.

I just sent off for alpine strawberry seeds, despite all the complaints that I read online about how hard it is to persuade them to germinate.

I have Blacktail Mountain watermelon seeds! I read about them in Carol Deppe's book Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, wanted 'em, couldn't find 'em, but suddenly I see them at more than one site. Yay!

Similarly, Bountiful Bush Beans are my favorite bean and I was afraid I'd never find them again. Suddenly, again, they're being sold by more than one vendor.

I'm probably not going to grow Copra onions this year, because we're trying to work only as much space as we can tend, and anyway I decided that I ought to grow my own from seed instead of buying plants and I think I'm too late for that. Maybe. It's possible that in the next blog post I'll tell you that I changed my mind and I'm growing a thousand plants of them. We'll see.

We probably will grow Yukon Gold potatoes. Except as I type that I realize that we're growing everything under landscape fabric or landscape paper this year, and you're supposed to hill up potatoes. Hmm. Can you grow potatoes under landscape fabric, maybe lifting it to hill up and then lowering it again - probably with pleats to make room for all that hilliness? Is that just whacky? Or, of course, I could make the potato bed the one "open" bed without landscape fabric and focus my weeding effort there.

I haven't eaten anything from the garden yet this spring, since we sort of restarted the whole thing--no leftover winter crops. I'm tempted to plant some lettuce or radishes just to change that.

Um.

That is all.