On Tuesday morning, after a poor night’s sleep, I was up at 5AM and got my post up. I got the chores done and the cats fed early (I hope this doesn’t set a precedent…) and my helper got her breakfast and we were out in the gardens by 6:30AM.
I’d decided to weed the peas and carrots and have her start getting ready to plant the cabbage and cauliflower in the Big garden.
The carrots had mostly come up well, except for the old seed I’d had to use ¾ of the way down the row. It hadn’t come up at all. Fortunately I still had seed left from when I bought some to finish the first planting back in April. So I reseeded.
The peas were well up and I am glad I didn’t wait to weed. They hadn’t quite started to attach to the fence, so I could get all the heavy weeds out from behind them. I finished the weeding about 9:30AM.
The neighbor and her sweet dog stopped by to tell me she’d seen the hay man and he was haying in the area. I hope he plans to do my fields…
I’d weeded the flower row as I did the last row of peas and as it was the last thing needing planted until May 31, I decided to plant all the flowers in it.
From the back:
Love in a Mist
Zinnias
Snapdragons
English Wallflowers
Heliotrope
Marigolds
Alyssum
While I was doing that, my general helper was moving the mulch, amending, broadforking and planting the cabbages. Notice we’ve still not removed the flowers from the rhubarb in back.
She’d had to give the quince a major haircut on the north and east sides so she could plant.
Then she realized that while she could plant the cauliflower, when she went to move the mulch hay bales, stuff might fall on the plants. So she used the hay bales to mulch the perimeter of the Big garden.
Then she was able to plant and mulch the area. I helped her finish the mulching of the cauliflower and then we moved over to the Small garden to mulch the flower row.
We used up a lot of the loose hay we’d brought in on Monday. So the Small garden is completely finished except planting the sprawly plants like squash and pumpkins on May 31.
Once we’d cleaned up our mess, we went and finally took the flowers off the rhubarb and harvested enough for both of us. I planned to make strawberry-rhubarb sauce, so I gave her all the red stalks so her sauce would be red.
She left about 11:15AM and I got my notes made and photos done and got a shower and rested for a few hours. Then I made some lunch and fell asleep on the couch under my quilts because I was so tired. I had Fantasia from 1940 playing.
It had been cloudy or hazy most of the morning. The sun didn’t come out until 10:30AM. At one point we smelled smoke so I wondered if the haze was from Canadian wildfires. It got pretty hot pretty quickly once the sun came out.
New South – blue flag iris flowering
My brother got home around 5PM and we set about putting the screens in 2 of the 3 screen doors. We also made the strawberry-rhubarb sauce.
Larry will love sitting in front of the screen and watching the rabbit around the New Herb garden.
My helper is going to sleep here tonight so we can get another early start in the Big garden. We have 6 rows of onions to plant and mulch before it gets too hot. But the sun is supposed to be out by 8AM, so we may not last as long out there on Wednesday.
Look at those beautiful rows of plants, they look so good. I like your garden.
Is Rhubarb edible? Is it used in salads?It's so leafy and just a little would make so much.
The leaves are toxic, oxalic acid in them. They are cut off and discarded. So it's only the red stalks (or sometimes green) that are used. It is usually cut into 1" pieces and either simmered on to stove or baked in the oven. It's very tart/sour and needs some sweetening. It's mostly used for desserts, either as a sauce or in cobblers, crisps, etc.
I know your garden is a very massive one so how do you cope with the maintenance of the small garden?
I like how you mulched the cauliflowers
All the big gardens were created to provide a year's supply of food for what once was a family of 3. And I used to have help also. Since my husband died, it's been hard.
Gradually the work is getting done and getting achieved as it needs to be. You are really doing a great job
A lot of mulching in the garden, to keep the plants protected huh?
To a small degree. I first started using it for weed control. Then I realized how much it improved the soil. It’s also important to ALWAYS keep the soil covered, either with mulches or with cover crops. And lastly, it greatly reduces watering.
Waking up very early in the morning can be stressful. How do you achieve it? I tried waking early today but couldn’t achieve it cos I’m not used to it.
Kudos to you!
I’ve always been an early bird, waking some time after 4AM most days. But I am also in bed shortly after 8PM.
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