Getting Things Done

The soil is workable.
A bit too damp still, but I can ignore that small detail.

As is the case every year, the hubs had the usual fight with the rototiller. Apparently, just add oil and the motor will seize tight as a drum on you after it has started momentarily and then stalled.
I went on an internet hunt for used ones for sale. Ha! $1800.00?! Are these people kidding? They're used for Pete's sake. The prices never got down to a range we were even close to affording. I think the cheapest I found in my area was $600.00. Bah. So the fight continued after a few phone calls to friends for discarded motors, of which only one was found that wouldn't come close to fitting.

In the end it didn't matter as 'spawn of satan' tiller decided it had given him enough grief and was ready to go to work for another season. His arm is hurting like heck this morning from a temperamental rewind being yanked a thousand times, but at least he won in the end.

After the wasted few hours fighting with the devil tiller, we popped over to my step-mom's for her birthday. By afternoon we were more than ready to actually get something accomplished.

The trellis got set up and the peas are planted. All five varieties. I hate peas, but the rest of the fam love them, so I guess it's not wasted space? lol.

Alaska
Wando
Sugar Snap
Oregon Sugar Pod
Laxton's Progress

Whichever variety they decide they like best is what will ultimately get planted next year. I don't even know what variety we grew last year. They will eat them no matter what kind they are anyway, so I guess it doesn't much matter.

Half the onions got in the ground - Sweet Spanish.
We ran out of light before we could get the White Bunching sprouts planted. We'll get to those on Tuesday.

The koi are much happier as we've gotten the pond filter and waterfalls up and running. All seem well and happy. Unfortunately, we lost one last year (due to a pump malfunctioning) but this spring everyone looks good. I'd really, really love some Wakin, but they're impossible to find for sale around here, and if you do stumble on a few, they want $25.00 a piece! Unreal.

The Orfe were zipping around and looking for those first bugs of spring. It is glorious to see them whizzing through the water again. There may be no blooms in the yard, but there is color in the water. :)

According to last years records, we transplanted broccoli, cabbage, head lettuce, cauliflower and brussel sprouts on April 22 and they all did very well except for the brussels. Maybe I'll start hardening them off this week and get them in the ground a week or ten days earlier this year to see how they do compared to last. Hopefully, I'll have better luck with the brussel sprouts staying tighter.

My daughter got me some India Mustard seed last year. I have no idea what this is, or how to use it. The packet only says "used for greens", "pick outside leaves as they mature to encourage more growth". I've come across a few sites that say it is an invasive weed in some parts of the US, but dies at 17 degrees.

So, what do you do with it? Eat the leaves or grow it for the seeds? Some info said that it has a peppery flavor in salads when you use the small interior leaves, but it will have a 'burn your tonsils' effect if you eat the mature leaves. My youngest son would be happy with the burn your tonsils thing, but the hubs would not. Do you cook like collards (which I'm also hoping to try growing for the first time this year)? Mix with lettuce? Wait for the seed and make mustard? Seriously - what?

I'd hate to waste garden space on something we won't end up eating. Maybe I'll give it a half-row with the collards. Experiments are always fun!

Hurts So Good

I dodged raindrops and got quite a bit accomplished today.
Go me!

I repaired the cracks in the pond stream. I hope I got them good enough. This winter was a real pisser on the concrete. We've never had a problem before, but this year beat the crap out of it. The stream wasn't the only thing to heave - every freaking perennial I have is sitting a few inches higher than it was in the fall.

I started weeding the cracks between the stone path (who said the weeds and grass could grow there all winter?), got half done and had to postpone the carnage due to a rain delay.
Hey, I got half done before another task ... ummm ... caught my attention before the next bout of rain vs plant-slave-lady. The soil is so pliable right now, it was pretty hard to resist digging in it.

After much searching (why, oh why do I never pay attention to where I store tools?) I found my happy little half-moon edger and went to town on one of the front flowerbeds. The grass had actually creeped into the bed a good 6 inches through winter. Urg!
But, might as well make it even bigger while I'm at it, right? The hubs will never notice? Ahem ... yeah, right.

Now, that bed is a foot wider. Alrighty then, so all that removed sod is flopped onto the lawn and looks like hell. Shhh! It'll go away (eventually).

The oldest son brought me some tiles someone was going to use as fill (no, no, no!) and I got them all into the ground as an edger for the bed. It looks pretty nice! They're brick colored, but only about a quarter inch thick, 4 inches wide and maybe 6 inches long. They worked nicely. I'll still have to keep an eye out for grass roots creeping between where the edges are butted together, but it's sure better than letting the grass just go to town and taking over the whole freaking flowerbed. I got them as tight to each other as possible. (who knew a trowel worked just as good as a rubber mallet?)

Another rain delay. I tried to work through it, but do you know how wet your butt can get when you're bent over and it's facing the sky? Yeah - enough said.

I finally got all the edging done, thought about finishing the weeding in the walkway, but decided the dianthus ('fire witch' I WSed last year) might as well be moved. It sure as heck isn't happy where it is and those tiles looked so lonely a whole foot away from anything green! So, I moved almost all of them, at least 50, to the edge of the front bed.

Honestly, that wasn't all that much work to do in one day, but for the first real after-winter workout it was more than my body thought was necessary. My legs and ankles hurt, my back aches, and my arms are asking if they could please fall off and be left in a heap on the floor. I'm kind of shocked that I'm hurting already. It's usually the next morning that the bod starts the protests.

But, it's a good hurt, you know? The, "I got something accomplished today," kind of hurt.
It sort of feels nice! We won't talk about the stained hands and dirt under the nails. Hmmm...now where did I stash those gloves...

Speaking Of Silly Tools...

I hesitate to post this, since, I, in no way, want to give them any publicity, but am curious as to how many people would actually buy something like this.

Year Round Tomato

I'm sure you've seen other ads from the same company (Telebrands), including 'Grease Bullet', 'StickUp Bulb', etc. Unless you live in a cave somewhere, it's pretty hard to avoid them.

I can only imagine what frail, spindly plants you'd end up with. I've even tried a few (tomatos) in the pond - not a very successful experiment to say the least, though many people have had great results doing it that way.

I imagine to a new gardener, or someone who doesn't want to go through the whole dirt thing, this would look rather appealing. Besides, how awesome are fresh tomatos in winter?

I would never buy one, just wondered what you thought of the whole idea and components. I'm sure it wouldn't take much imagination to craft your own - and there's probably someone out there that already has something rigged just like it. I'll bet they ain't too happy.

Back To-ol Basics

First, see: The Garden Shed

lol, I love it! Can I have one?

Browse anywhere on the net or a B&M store and it seems filled with tools that are 'must haves' for gardeners. Progress? I think not.

The plow? Excellent invention.
Cotton gin? Beautiful! Have you ever seen what picking by hand can do to flesh?
Combine? Hiram Moore changed harvesting forever.
Fertilizer? Unless you have perfect soil that will rejuvenate itself miraculously, gotta have it.

And what would gardeners do without the basics of wheelbarrows, rakes, trowels and hoes?(Hoes are definitely Carol's specialty, so what's up with her pic of a woman with a lawnmower?) Some of those first (now considered antique) , basic garden tools are still the best.

But the question is - why all those useless, frivolous tools that don't really accomplish much? If it's for the garden and for sale, we buy it. We subconsciously find our own personal excuses as to why we need it. And some of them are just plain silly! (Yes, tools and excuses.)

When I was a kid, it was gardening with the basics. Always. You put your back into it, darn it!

You plowed, raked, manured, seeded, weeded, thinned, sweated in the blazing 100 degree sun, sweated some more, picked and squished bugs, got a good dark tan, harvested, spent weeks canning and freezing and smiled with satisfaction when you consumed a good self-grown meal.

And you did it all by hand and mostly sliding along the rows on your butt with a homemade bushel basket. To this day I still find major personal satisfaction when I finally stumble into the house at dusk, exhausted, covered with dirt, mud, burdocks and sweat.

When did we begin to think gardening should be easy? Or that there should be twenty million tools stocked at our local store to make it so?

• Bend over to pluck a weed by hand? Surely you jest!? They make those weed-pick-standing-up thingies now.
• Squeeze that bug between my fingers? Ewww! That's what they make bug killer for!
• Work with naturally hard soil? Ugh! Addatives, damnit, amendments!
• Real cow and chicken manure? You're kidding, right? They make good stuff with additives in such pretty bags!
• Heirloom seeds? What for? Those new genetically enhanced seeds are fab!

Now, I don't begrudge the people who use them! If you need them to make your gardening experience more enjoyable, so be it. I realize there are a percentage of people with physical problems that would find it impossible to have a garden without the help of these tools. I'm only taking into consideration, for this thought run-on, the people who are in no way physically incapasitated and able to do it without all this extra 'stuff'.

You hear a lot that the art of making the 'old' crafts are dying, or disappearing altogether. I consider gardening a form of art, or craft. Are the old ways dying? Disappearing? It amazes me that so much of what seems new in gardeing is really the old, tried and true. People are only just discovering now the techniques their grandparents, and their grandparents before them, have used for eons.

They'd gone out of fashion, suddenly returning as a new fad, probably to disappear for something deemed better, and to return to our grandchildren as a new idea. (The 'new' thing is stunting paperwhites with alcohol - my grandmother did the same thing ages ago, but with sugar water and pennies. I wish I had paid attention to what she was doing! I wonder when this will suddenly become a 'new' idea.)

Sometimes I wonder how much of the world's population would survive if there were some major cataclysmic event and we were forced to rely on our own gardening skills to subsist. Tools may not save us, but basic-known-forever knowledge probably would.