Breaking Ground

Hello!  It’s lunch time and I’m at the library, sorting through a bunch of pictures I took during my gardening session on Tuesday night.  We’ve been enjoying four glorious days of weather here in Kansas.  I’ve been trying to get outside as much as possible.  And I’ve worn a skirt four days in a row!  The sun and the breeze just feel so great.

Tuesday night after work I wanted to take advantage of some time in the garden.  It rained last weekend, so I figured by Tuesday the ground would be dried out enough so we could work one of the beds.

We break up the ground with the big tiller which FIL owns, or a tiller attachment that fits on our weed eater.  We don’t have the big tiller at our house now, so Benzo just used the little tiller this week.

Like my shadow?  After the ground was broken up, I raked it over and pulled out any big weed or grass clumps.  I either just chuck the weed clumps aside or throw them in the compost.

Then it was time to plant.  All my supplies:

I take my gardening books out to the garden a lot.  Especially when I’m planting new things.  Also in the picture are all my seeds in the random Victoria’s Secret bag and a kick-butt ruler I got at my favorite store, Planters.  The ruler tells you how far apart to plant almost everything.  I refer to it constantly.

Since I was planting new stuff this week, I referred to the companion planting pages of the The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible a lot.

So what did I plant?  I planted spinach, turnips, peas, kale, and collards.  I added them to the bed where I planted lettuce, carrots and radishes about a week ago.  See that post for info on direct sowing seeds.  Basically just dig a little furrow, put some seeds in and cover them up.  Make sure to mark your rows with a stick or something so you know where your plants are going to come up.

I’d like to put together a little diagram of how I laid the seeds out in the bed.  Maybe I can post that later this week.  There’s really no method to my madness.  I just make sure the plants are not opposed to being planted together by referring to the companion planting table, and then I start drawing the rows based on how far apart they need to be from other plants. 

After the seeds were planted I watered them in.  Unlike last time when the ground was already wet and we were expecting rain, this time the seeds needed a drink to get going.

I usually use the watering can when watering in seeds.  The source of water for the garden is about 250 feet away, so I just make several trips back and forth so I can get enough water on them.  It’s good exercise!

Here’s the plot after everything is planted.  You can kind of see the rows based on where I watered.

This robin hung out with me for awhile:

The camera is kind to him here, because he was actually pretty fat.  Benzo said he saw him get a worm and fly off with it!

I didn’t get home until after dark last night, so I didn’t get a chance to check the garden.  I’m looking forward to getting out there tonight to see if my lettuce and radishes from last week are sprouting.  It’s been over a week now!  Surely they are starting to come up!

Tonight we are also planning on planting potatoes so more on that later.  Have a great afternoon!