Tuesday, May 31, 2011

There.

Hydrangea pruned.
Havahart trap set.
Garden watered.

Planting

Got back from the nursery later this morning. I had bought some pencil thin onion plants, yellow Spanish. I also bought 3 parsley plants, 3 sage, 2 oregano and one marjoram.

Just got done putting them in when the youngest daughter woke up.  I set the sprinkler to water them and came in.  Half hour naps are not fun.

I was going to prune the dead branches off the hydrangea and seed some more kale, but that isn't going to happen today.

I did startle a woodchuck in the back, it was right about at the fence line where we haven't finished it yet.  I'm going to set the trap as soon as i get the chance to get back out there.  Best to be proactive this time around.  Not too happy about it though, its way too soon to start having to deal with the vermin already.

We had been putting the dog's droppings behind the fence in that area hoping it would deter them.  Our fence is two feet inside our property line and he nice neighbors don't use that part of their yard so its not on their land and not in their way.  But it dosen't seem to have helped. Suburban vermin aren't scared of domestic  dog doo.

Gardening footprints

Unfortunately, i'm not being poetic.  My garden is beginning to look like i am growing footprints instead of plants.
I could tolerate the cat footprints and when hubby tripped into my onion bed while mowing.. i could understand that as a one time thing...  but now i have neighborhood kid prints in there.  The kids around here are what i call "feral children"  they are taught nothing good and so they act it. Zero respect for anything, not other people or fence boundaries...

So now i have about 10 footprints in my onion bed and a few in the potatoes, and at least one set among my broccoli.
I really hope this isn't how the summer is going to go.

I plan to be putting the electric fence up soon, the woodchucks will be appearing sooner that i expect,  i hope he kids are prepared to respect the electric fence sign.

For the most part the rest of the garden is doing well. Some of my winter squash seeds are coming up, tomatoes are looking good. Potatoes are emerging. My onions were coming up, but many have been stepped on.  T he radishes are getting multiple leaves.  The beets aren't showing up.  The weeds are going bonkers.
I'll need to lift off the whole tunnel to check on the cucumbers again.  What i had hoped were cucumbers turned out to be squash volunteers,  so those got plucked away. 
I'll be planting corn as soon as i can .

I may go to the nursery and get some onion sets and give up on the seeded onions...  there are just too many footprints in that plot.  I haven't decided yet....  If i don't get sets i might just leave that bed to its own devices until its bean planting time and i can just put string beans there. 
Either way, i need to take a trip out there to get some herb plants.  Just parsley for the most part. Maybe something else if it catches my eye and can fi in there. Another thought is some Asian greens,  i have plenty of seed for that.  I'll soon have extra seed flats too, its warm enough for the eggplant and peppers to get under the row cover with the tomatoes and squash.
In the end, though i like the onions from the garden, they are rather inexpensive at the store still, i think it won't be such a bad thing to grow something that can't be store bought instead of the onions... like Asian greens....

Either way, i think i'll start my onions in flats rather than direct sow next year.  That goes for most everything too.  I have located most of my seeded in broccoli and cabbage, kholrabi too...  but i don't like how i have to look so closely.  I prefer having seedlings to plant.  That was this year's first lesson. 
I will start tender stuff indoors and wintersow things like onions and brassicas.

I have a scuffle hoe i need to restore. Hubby found it with my red garden rake in the free pile at the "recycle plant"-- aka, the Town Dump.  Anyway, the hoe is crusty and dull. It needs work with a wire brush and i think i can use hubby's lawn mower blade sharpener  to put the edge back on the hoe.  It attaches to his cordless drill like a drill bit. Its kinda neat, it should do the trick.

Now that my oldest daughter is out of school for the summer, i have an extra set of eyes to help me watch the little one.  That is if my oldest wakes up before noon....