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May 15, 2006
A New Hope...
Over the winter, Suellen bought us a couple of books on gardening. “You should read these,” she said. I agreed, and promptly went back to splitting wood and doing tax returns. It’s hard to think about gardening when there’s a foot of snow on the ground. But as the days warmed, I decided to take a look. The two books were Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening and Christopher Bird’s Cubed Foot Gardening. I was instantly on the road to enlightenment.
When spring began to show its face, I got some old 2 x 10s and made 4 x 4 foot boxes. I tilled the underlying soil, adding gypsum to help break up the clay and lower the ph. Then I put down the boxes and filled them with a mixture of garden soil (from Walmart), peat moss (from Cal Ranch—my favorite store), and last year’s cow manure (from my friend’s ranch). I positioned sprinklers on each box to make watering easy. Then, last but not least, I stapled chicken wire to the outside of the boxes to keep the #@&%$ rabbits out.
Days here get warm about February, but nights remain cold well into May. In the first week of April, I optimistically planted a “spring” crop of cabbages, peas, spinach, radishes, and onions, but despite the warm days, nothing came up until May. Memorial Day Weekend is the traditional planting time for summer crops, so I sure hope something gets ripe before then!
Posted by DJSueellen at May 15, 2006 08:27 PM
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