Cultivate, Cultivate, Cultivate!!

We managed to get out today to finish up the soil preparations, as well as do some seed plantings. Between last weekend and this weekend, we've added bags of top soil (sea soil), as well as earthworm castings compost,and peat moss. This helped to raise the planting beds a couple of inches, which will help keep the plants' roots nice and warm, and well drained.

Here you can see the half way point of the cultivating process at the back bed/sub plot. I used a spade fork to turn the soil a good 8-10 inches deep, then breaking the unearthed soil clumps with the cultivator/hoe, and picking out the rocks, clay clumps (there were many) and get rid of any remaining hidden weeds and bad bugs or worms.


Here's a shot of some of the clay clumps we removed.


Then another one of us would rake the soil, to further remove clay clumps and debris, and finally smooth and even out the top surface, ready for planting.


Today we sowed Carrots, Dill, Basil, Beets, Parsley, Kale, Garlic Chives and Swiss Chard.

For where we were planting the carrots, we had to sift the top soil, as carrot seedlings are delicate and have a hard time breaking ground. This will improve their chances of surviving and growing strong and healthy!


Here you can see towards the top of the image, the sifted soil, what a difference!


After the planting of all the seeds that needed to planted in this round for April, Jason waters the beds, giving them a good long drink.



Some seeds only take 6-8 days to germinate, so we should probably see some little seedlings sprouts this weekend!! We'll keep you posted.

Weeding, Planning, and Honks!!

Today we were at the garden to finish weeding, and in the process we also had to remove the retaining wood planks to get at all the weeds invading the planting beds. This actually worked out great, as we had to reconfigure and re-peg some of the planks, to make better access to some of the beds/subplots.

It was a bit chilly with gusts of winds, but this had brought out the bald eagles, soaring high above, as well as ruffle up snow geese every so often(200 or so geese) to take feeding shelter right next to the community garden to munch on grass. I managed to walk about 20ft away from them to watch them watch me and go back to the eating frenzy, it was pretty cool.

The beginings of La Dolce Vita - a Harvest Garden...

We finally got hold of our community Garden Plot, and luckily Doreen was able to get out there first and do some of the weeding - the two front subplots have been weeded in the photo. As you can see weeds do take over quick, as do stray older vegetable plants! The tall plants you see towards the back in one of the smaller sub plots is a type of Kale, which we were lucky enough to get some of the still tender buds and leaves to try one meal of it.



The soil had a lot of heavy clay in it, 4" below the top soil, as well as clumps hard and thick as rubber within the top soil. Must have gotten some top soil from some developement site in the past, instead of nice fertile well draining soil. We've got our work cut out for us! Weed, semi-cultivate the soil, add top soil and compost, then deep cultivate...