No Better Smell than Freshly Turned Earth

Plowing day finally arrived. We've been incredibly busy preparing for this day. We shoveled and screened and dumped and spread 8 cubic yards of unscreened compost, then we bought 4 more screened yards from Clark Farm to finish off.

Screening Compost

Then we found out that we needed to remove all the undecomposed cardboard we'd just buried with compost. So I spent all of yesterday afternoon and evening pulling up cardboard with a pitchfork, and this morning Alex pitched in bright and early, and we got nearly all of it up before the tractor arrived at 9am.

Thanks, Chris!

Happy kids with the tractor

Chris Barnes came down from Middleton and did a great job with his tractor and its heavy-duty five-foot-wide rototiller attachment. He pulled the tiller back and forth over the soil three or four times. We kept waiting with baited breath. Would we turn up big stones? Bad soil? Nope, the largest thing we found was a very old tire iron! None of the rocks were larger than fist-sized, and the soil was beautiful throughout. There's a patch in the northeast quarter of the garden that's quite sandy, probably the base of the above-ground pool that once stood there. Even better - now I don't have to prepare a bed with sand for the potatoes and other root veggies.

Meanwhile, things in the greenhouse are cooking! Right now, the greenhouse is at 95 degF, and things are sprouting all over. I finally conquered the bug infestation on the kale (four dousings with insecticidal soap!), the peas mysteriously started blooming three days ago, the peppers have all sprouted, the tomatoes are just starting to peek out, and one overly ambitious nasturtium has gotten going, too. I think they're all liking the warm weather and the Neptune's Harvest fertilizer I've been feeding them. Looks like I will have vast quantities of kale, for which I really need to roll lots and lots of pots.

But my plan for today is to enjoy working outside at last. The soil is so rich and dark and delicious to look at. I can hardly wait until we form the beds. For that, we've hired all the middle school students at Harborlight Montessori School to come and dig on Monday, April 23rd. Before they come, I need to even out the soil in a few places and spread my amendments: blood meal, bone meal, beneficial nematodes, and MycoGrow for a healthy mycelial ecology.

Next steps:

• Start cukes and squash in the greenhouse
• Pull the seed potatoes out of the fridge and get them sprouting in the greenhouse
• Amend soil and build raised beds
• Buy and set up irrigation equipment
• Cover beds destined for hot-weather crops like tomatoes and peppers with black row covers
• Set up our new compost tumblers and move the compost heap from its rapidly decomposing wooden structure
• Roll more pots. And then more pots!
• Set up another rain barrel for that far-off day when we get rain again
• Get peas and other early crops planted pronto