A Good Gardening Week!

Hello again. Sorry for the delay in posting, but the past week has been exceptionally busy. In addition to tending our home garden and starting our county park garden, I've been helping out some friends with a non-gardening project that took up quite a few hours.

So, I'll start with the county garden plot.  That's been quite an experience, to say the least!  The ground was plowed back in early March and the plots were allowed to be used as of March 15. Of course, the rainfall after the Ides of March was fairly continuous and the temperatures seasonably cool. By the beginning of May, as skies began to brighten, the sun popped out on a few very warm days and baked the muddy soil into the hardness of adobe brick. It also has a fairly large amount of broken quartz rock. We watched in awe as a neighboring gardener tried to get a roto tiller through his plot. It was hard to tell whether he was pushing the tiller or the tiller was pulling him along as it lurched in fits and starts through the hard soil.

Thankfully, our plan didn't require a deep digging of the entire plot. We are only putting in five plants: butternut squash, delicata squash, acorn squash, pumpkin, and gourds.  All are "winter" vegetables - those that will not be harvested until September and October. And, they all are plants that will take up large amounts of space. We fully expect that by mid-summer, the plot will be jammed with large leafed vines taking up the entire space. You may remember the butternut we grew last year that spread throughout much of our home garden space.

While I was putting up some critter fencing, Lois began laying out layers of newspaper that would soon be covered by a weed control mat.

When finished (in the next day or so),  260 square feet will be covered with the weed mat.  The center space (140 square feet from left to right) will be covered in a mulch and will contain the plants in a staggered manner with three toward the back and 2 to the front.

The home garden is full with plantings now. I'll be back here tomorrow or Monday with updates. I hope to see you then!