Gardening is Better Than a Gym Membership

 I have been working in the yard daily for the past four or five days. Reaching, lifting, stretching, bending, digging. I'm out there four to seven hours each day, never working hard but always in motion. (Okay, digging holes can reach "working hard.")

I've noticed that I feel better. There is a new spring in my step and greater flexibility. I go to bed tired and I sleep well. There must be something to this fresh air and sunshine thing! :)

I know my boys enjoy having me outside. Randall, the gray tuxedo cat, is always with me. If I'm not careful, he will wrap himself around my feet and trip me. His favorite thing, however, is to lay down right where I'm pulling weeds, roll on his back and then to demand a belly rub. Who can resist that?



Loki, the black tuxedo kitten, is far too busy to do more than pass by as I weed raised beds. He bounces by, does a nose-nose with Randall, and is off again.  Lonesome, my orange and white boy, likes to be around, but not too close to Randall. Whenever they get within hissing distance, they start jockeying for Top Cat.

Sigh. I do hope they get it out of their system.


Today's project was to finish the strawberry bed and start the allium bed. I shredded four brown paper sacks of paper and newsprint last night to make this much mulch. A fifth bag could have been put to good use, but I need to shred more first. Cyprus mulch is prettier. I might buy some bags of it later on, but the good thing about paper is it is biodegradable and doing this keeps it out of a landfill.

Viola! The allium bed. The yellow onions and elephant garlic wintered over nicely. I've cleared the rest of the squares. My daughter Jen loves red onions, so I planted three squares of onions for her. After that I moved the chives from another bed to their new home. I broke up the root mass and turned one big clump into six smaller clusters. I hope they like having toe room!

There are 12 squares available in this bed, so the chives and green onions from the house now live here, too. Next I want to find some leeks to grow. If there is room, I may start a square of Egyptian bunching onions. (Not sure about that one.)

Over the winter I've has a small pot of chives inside. I also did the recycled garden trick with green onions. What is the recycled garden trick? That's where you save the roots from a plant -- in this case green onions -- and replant them as soon as you have used the plant for cooking. I had lettuce, regular onions, and green onions growing. Only the green onions made it. I think the cats were helping me water the lettuce. (I wonder why it didn't survive?)

There was something about that lettuce tub on the floor that attracted all the animals. Brooklyn hid her bone in that bucket, too!

I HATE HENBIT!

http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/WEEDS/henbit.html

 My yard has been taken over by henbit!  

Every spring, the old garden is full of henbit. It creeps in from the vacant house next door and takes over. Seen from a distance as you whiz down a country road, those perky little pinkish-purple flowers covering a farmer's fallow field can be enchanting. Having them in your raised beds and walks is a different story.

My landscape architect friend was telling me that the real time to fight henbit is in the fall when it's seeding. Too late for that right now, so I have to do it manually.  Plan A is to do a raised bed a day until I have it under control. Plan B is to try to curb it's growth with wheat straw mulch in my walkways. I've never seen anyone mulch walkways with straw. You see photos of cypress mulch or other bark, even gravel walks. Why not straw? The worst that can happen is I'll seed a bit of wheat to fight for growing room with the henbit. Wheat is a grass. I can mow it.


Today was the day. I grabbed gloves, wheelbarrow, a bucket and some tools and tackled the first bed. It was pretty bad. The henbit was so thick there was no clue what rested in that bed -- or if it had survived the winter.

The good thing about henbit is it has shallow roots and pulls easily. The ground is still moist and works easily, too, so I could grab handsful of the stuff and dump it into the tub. When the tub got full, I could empty it into the wheelbarrow and keep on going. I just had to watch out for the plants that belonged in the bed and not disturb them in my righteous frenzy to get rid of the hateful henbit.


Surprise! This is the strawberry bed!

It was a full afternoon project clearing this 4-12' bed. I completely filled the wheelbarrow with my gleanings. Ah! compost!!

I love strawberries. I've worked hard to keep this bed alive. A few years ago I had three 4' square beds of strawberries that were going crazy. I had strawberries to give away and my brother was happy to come pick his own. (He loves them as much as I do.) Then the first drought hit. I salvaged five plants. Last spring, I made this new bed. I added close to 40 more plants and trenched and watered and babied them through another drought. It wasn't enough. Only 1/3 of those survived. I haven't decided if I will add new plants to the bed this year, or encourage these plants to make daughters. 

These are Ozark Beauties. I can usually find plants locally to fill in the bed, but none of the places I've been have offered them yet. They have other strawberry varieties, but no Ozark Beauties. It may be mail order time again...