Gardening To Do

Steve Boehme at Good Seed Farm got me to thinking about getting ready to garden and all of the things I need to do for our landscape. We were near his place yesterday but didn't know if he was open yet. Sure enough, he was.

Our friend Dutch in West Texas was running the tiller in his garden and I told him we could be doing that here, too. It's time to start thinking about gardening and time to get some onion and lettuce seeds planted. I might even plant some very early sweet corn!

Our garden is the only place I don't notill and some of my friends like to tease me about that. I till because I don't spray the garden and tillage is my main source of weed control. In the field, it is cheaper, more profitable and more resourceful to not till and run the big sprayer to raise crops.

I didn't drive my Dakota to Cleveland so I never had the tool box with my soil probe in it. Becky mentioned they wanted their soil tested and it was so wet there, a probe would have worked best instead of a shovel to obtain the samples. They hope to plant blueberries and peach trees as they are so close to Lake Erie. I have no idea what their soil is like but their weather is conducive to those fruits that are hard to grow here.

As growing degree days advance, I really need to kill all the broadleaf weeds in the lawn so my grasses have a better chance to compete. There is always so much to do on a 5 acre landscape with all the bins, barns and driveways. The semi's have cut deep ruts into the yard on the edges and there is lots of repairing to do.

The garden needs to be plowed first so I hope to call the fellow tomorrow to plow our garden for the first time. It's only been tilled the few years we have gardened here and the weeds really need to be buried so we can start with a clean slate. A good dose of manure would be nice to plowdown too but I have plenty of residue to turn under. It almost looks like a notill garden because it has been managed pretty close to that with only a little tillage between the rows after the plantings.

This could be an early year to plant as the ground has been fit for tillage a couple of times already as I have mentioned in recent blogs. We saw a big patch of daffodils in full bloom near my mother's farm yesterday in Sardinia. They are on a protected southeast facing slope and they could fool you that "spring has sprung."

Actually we are still in "sprinter," not spring and not winter. It got down to 30 degrees Fahrenheit last night after the big storm came through. There are snow flakes blowing in the chilly air but it will be 60 again in a few days. The wood and pellet stoves are going full blast.

Maybe we can duplicate that good garden we had six years ago. What's on your gardening to do list?

Ed