Monday, March 8, 2010

Race the Rain Gardening

We've had a stretch of decent weather to kick start spring here in Texas, but more rain was forecast for Sunday/Monday. I've tried hard to make full use of it...

Wed March 3rd--planted potatoes

Thursday March 4th -- boy and I made a run to the dirt store before work to get a load of compost (who knew $34 could bring so much joy to our lives).

side Note: Boy loves to watch the tractors and I love to get dirt. The tractor drives know us now and go out of their way to do a tractor rodeo for boy. These are HUGE tractors, the scoop is bigger than our little Tacoma so about 1/4 of a scoop fills our truck bed. The tractor driver has taken to using the scoop to level off the dirt in the truck, and even patted it down with the scoop. He was so precise that the shocks on our truck did not move as this huge bucket tapped the dirt in the truck bed. so neat! Boy flips out about it, I think it is pretty cool too. Yes, a load of compost is worth being an hour late for school and work!

Friday March 5th -- Kids were at grandma's so I was able to wake up early and start tilling. I'm sure the neighbors love me, because I actually watched the sunrise as I was tilling the back 1/4 of the garden! The back two rows tilled up great, but I got bogged down in mud and muck on the 3rd row and had to quit. Rather than doing one job fully, I"m doing the garden piece wise, I just don't have the time all at once to do it all. So my method was to till a row, bring in a barrow of compost, level it, then bring in a barrow of mulch for the path... repeat. In this way, i was able to get 3 perfect, ready to plant rows done before I had to leave for work on Friday.

Friday March 5th (evening) -- Since the kids were at Grandma's we had our date night, which meant two garden centers and dinner out... thank you my sweet romantic hubby. We bought two grape plants and two muscadine plants (which we think are like grapes, but look a bit different, we need to research it), herbs (upright oregano, salad burnette, German chamomile), 3 tomatoes (great white, black prince, something stripe/streak?), two globe artichokes, and one calendula, 9-pack of sweet bell peppers, 9-pack banana peppers. I also got a pile of seeds: Quinoa, calendula, red amarath, beetberry?, sorrel, bush bean mix (same as last year), squash mix (same as last year), nasturtiums. I also bought four more bare root strawberry packs, which I've since returned, the quality from Lowes was awful. No real gardening happened that night, just lots of buying...

Saturday March 6th-- In the two hours between social obligations, I was able to till the last few sections of the garden (S-E quarter) and get bunch of stuff planted. I ended up having to plant more seeds than I expected because I very foolishly watered the plants I bought and did not realize the seed packets were underneath...oops. Boy and I quickly planted the pre-soaked seeds about 8 hours after my initial mistake. Beans (rows 6 and 7, qinona and nasturtiums row 13 along the fence)...

Sunday March 7th -- I was able to unload the last 3 wheelbarrow loads of dirt to the front fruit gardens before church, it started raining as i was cleaning out the back of the truck. After church, I planted the rest of the tomatoes (row 11) and peppers (sweet bell row 5, banana row 8). The German chamomile came with about 20 tiny seedlings in the pot, I spread those all over the yard in random drifts of 4-5 plants. Lets hope they do well in small groupings.


Phew! I"m sure there more, and there are pics later. It rained all day Sunday and we should have some thunderstorms on Monday. Now that the garden is tilled, I'm praying for a drenching rain 1-2 time per week for the next 3 months...

No comments:

Post a Comment