The Weekly Digs #70
In the garden the past few weeks we have been completely swamped with tasks. We replanted our corn and put up nets to keep off the birds (if you missed my story about that you can find it HERE). Seeding the corn was an all day event last Saturday and I’m excited because the corn has been sprouting and staying put! Wahoo!
The other crazy thing is we haven’t had rain in three weeks and our temperatures have been hovering around 90ºF everyday. Luckily one benefit of clay soil is that it retains a lot of moisture. However, at this point watering is becoming necessary because the clay is drying out and cracking like a desert!
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Some of the garden has mulch and some of it we haven’t been able to do yet.
Even though there was mulch down, because of the lack of rain we needed to water the new seedlings. We don’t have a well yet (that will come later this month) so all water needs to be transported to the garden.
The first day, we brought up 15 gallons of water from our house and had to fill up at our creek 4 times. It was incredibly time consuming since we need to drive to the creek to transport the water.
Two days later we came up again to water and I brought more containers but we were still going to the creek to fill up. Every time we went to go water it was taking us a minimum of 2.5 hours because we were hand watering and hauling everything.Â
Two days after that we came and the majority had sprouted. The roots are still shallow but at least I think we are past the hardest part. And it looks like we may get some rain next week. I am still going to do some watering just in case.
We also did our second succession planting of tomatoes- 60 paste tomatoes for canning and drying.
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I went up just a few days ago and prepped the garden beds for squash, pumpkins, and watermelon. First I added lime, then I spread some sand, then I loosened the soil with the rotary plow, shaped the beds, and finally we planted.
I always go to our land thinking it will only be a few hours but it was seven hours later when I got home!
Still on the to-do list is weeding and mulching for both gardens.
In the garden:
- Harvesting blueberries, cabbage, lettuce, kale, herbs, new potatoes, and blackberries.
- Planted 60 paste tomatoes (new garden)
- Planted Ledmon watermelon, Butternut Squash, Cantaloupe, and Long Island Cheese Pumpkin (new garden)