Henbogle

After a very dry April, we’ve been getting a bit of rain here at Henbogle.  The rain gauge shows about 2 inches over the past sever days, which was just what we needed to green things up in a hurry.

Of course, the weeds also relished the rain, but the nicely moistened soil made it a lot easier to remove some of the worst offenders in the garden, the dandelions.  While they make a lovely contrast with the tulips, the dandelions and other weeds really overtook the blueberry bed last summer while we were away.

The dandies also made themselves at home in the veggie garden, along with a lot of other weeds..  At least the dandelions and chickweed are delicacies in the eyes of the hens, but it was time for the weeds to go.  Dan used a garden fork to loosen up the soil around the dandelions, and pulled them out one by one.  With taproots of 10+ inches, it was a big job.  I raked the thick layer of chickweed out and gave it (and a lot of dandelions) to the hens, then went back and pulled a lot of chickweed and other weeds out by hand.  Look at the contrast between the weeded bed on the left, covered with plastic mulch, the center bed, with most of the chickweed gone, and the bed to the right of Dan, still awaiting the weed patrol.  We piled what weeds we didn’t give to the hens on plastic tarps to haul off to the town mulch pile.  I’m not convinced our compost pile will get hot enough to kill all the seeds in that mess, so off it goes.

We tried not to work the soil too much, as it is a bit wet, but it is the perfect time to weed.  After weeding, I sprinkled some Plant Tone fertilizer over the bed and lightly raked it smooth, then spread the plastic.  I purchased some garden staples from Fedco to pin the plastic down tightly, as the creeping charlie like to crawl into the garden under the mulch.  Just as we finished spreading the plastic, the rain began again, so we picked up the tools up and headed inside for our big clean-up.  We have more to do but in 2 hours of grunt labor, we made a lot of progress.

First:  Our snap peas are up! We have 2 short rows, one of Cascadia, one of Sugar Sprint.  These were planted April 22.  I’ll start another row this weekend.  The wood is in the pathway to suppress weeds and minimize compaction in this area.

Sunday, Dan planted my French Gray Shallots.  They should have been planted in the fall, but we didn’t get it done, so I have nothing to lose by trying this spring in hopes of a crop or at the very least, another seed crop for the fall.  These shallots are so tasty, I hate to lose them.  Once the shallots sprout, I’ll mulch well with compost or grass clippings.  To prepare the soil, we weeded well and I raked in some Plant Tone fertilizer.  It is pretty dry here so I watered them well and will give them another good watering again later this week unless we get some rain.

I hope to get some garlic in next weekend.

The quackgrass is pretty bad in the hoophouse, but I’m hoping I’ll get some greens harvested before it get too out of hand.  I’m planning on covering this with black plastic and growing melon and cucumber in there, with a soaker hose for irrigation.  If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to try something more drastic, like solarization.

Let’s just say we have plenty to keep us busy this summer.