Garden Cleanup

After a lovely Easter service at church, I spent yesterday afternoon out in the garden and greenhouse. The husband and I got quite a bit done even though it was cool and showery. I transplanted a few more trays of plants while he rototilled the garden. I am not a huge fan of tilling—I think it brings up weed seeds and causes more weeds to grow—but it’s the easiest way to get the soil amendments into the ground. He tilled the area where the potatoes were last year. I had mulched the potatoes with hemp waste from our farmer friend. The hemp worked great as a mulch, but our friend warned us that it might make tilling impossible because the hemp is rather stringy. He thought the hemp fibers would wrap around the tines of the tiller. Thankfully, we did not have any trouble. The hemp mulch had broken down over the winter and tilled in nicely. That area has had a lot of rotted straw and now hemp added to it and it is reasonably free of rocks.

Once the area was tilled—that far section—we put black plastic over it.

The squash and pumpkins will go there this year. I grow them on black plastic anyway, so I’m hoping that putting the plastic over the freshly-tilled soil will keep the weeds to a minimum between now and the end of May. Black plastic does not an asthetically-pleasing garden make, but it works. Weeds in Montana are absolutely relentless.

The tomatoes will go in that middle section. They do well there.

Except for the potatoes and the brassicas, there isn’t much to plant until the end of May. I spotted a couple of emerging pea shoots yesterday. I need to keep pruning out the raspberry patch. The strawberry bed also needs some attention. I still have to prune back the lavender hedge. And I can putter around in the herb garden.

After their big day on Saturday, the piglets have been sleeping a lot. They are still babies.

When they aren’t sleeping, they are eating. We will keep them inside the Piggy Palace for most of the week. When they go out into the pasture, the husband will train them to recognize and respect the electric fence.