Friday, March 20, 2009

Spring is Here!

Spring is springing and we have the gardening bug. I have several plants (two kinds of tomatoes and lots of herbs) coming up under the grow light in the spare room. Pat has reserved a tiller at the rental store. (Someday we'll get the one that was Dad's repaired.)

Now we just need to decide where we want to move the three blackberry bushes that survived last year. I'm leaning toward putting them along the north property line. We put them in the old vegetable garden last year, and now we realize we want to use the old vegetable garden again. The square foot gardening is cool, but we want more than we can plant in the squares. I plan to make permanent strawberry beds in two of the squares and plant salad greens and herbs in the other two squares. The rest of the vegetables will be planted in rows.

Dad always said you should have your potatoes planted by St. Patrick's Day. We're going to be a week late. I purchased seed potatoes, but haven't sliced them to cure for planting. That's okay. Pat hasn't tilled the garden yet, either. He says he will do it tomorrow.

We did get the soil tested. My folks gardened in this spot for close to 50 years, which explains why the nitrogen level is almost totally depleted. It was at 4 parts per million. Our soil is a little acid. It should be 6.5 and it's 7.4. We're supposed to add sulfur. (I see a trek to the nursery to find that.) Pat has purchased some 45-0-0 fertilizer to restore the nitrogen. I don't want to use chemical pesticides, but I don't have any reservations about chemical fertilizers. It's the food the plants want.

I do love this time of year. Summer gets hot and sluggish, but Spring! It's the best time for a 60 yr. old granny to run out and play in the dirt as if she were 6.