Wednesday May 10
May has been a continuation of April with many rain days. It's never an extreme amount of rain and it's not been with any damaging things like high wind or hail .... so far. I do like a well behaved thunderstorm. This morning the rain fell; the thunder rolled; and the air smelled so fresh after the rain was finished. Upon talking with my friends through out the day, all noticed the birds chirping their hearts out after the rain finished. It wasn't just one or two song birds but a whole choir of birds singing away. I think they were just happy and thankful for the rain.
It's been a challenge to get into the garden to work on the preparation but I do have the beds ready for planting. I wish I could say the same for the pathways. They have been so neglected. I haven't really planted any thing at the Urban Ranch yet except for four tomato plants in the buckets.
Terra Nova Gardens has been the focus this year.
Some times it's good to have taken pictures to see the progress that has been made. I had hoped to expand the garden beds by two but ended up with a total of four more beds to plant this year. This is what the expansion area looked like in February.
This is that same area at the beginning of May. Many hours of building the beds and digging the soil have produced some very nice beds to plant.
The first time through digging up the beds requires rock removal and vine removal. It takes several years to clear a bed from rocks. I have some beds that are entering into their 6th season and still rocks and vines will pop up to be removed. Each year there's less and less but I don't think they will ever be all removed. I some times think about when I can't continue to garden any more just how long will it take before the garden reverts back to the wild. I suspect it won't take long. Nature has all the time in the world and really can't be tamed forever. Nature will submit for a time but in the end always wins.
An idea conceived over the Winter months was to have a slanted wire trellis for cucumbers to climb with squash planted under the cucumbers. The open side faces to the East which gets full sun from sunup to about four in the afternoon. Since the sunshine hours are mostly from the East the vine plants tend to sprawl toward the East and not West.
The next bed over in the foreground will be sweet corn. The plan is to let the vine plants (squash or pumpkins) grow across the path and into the sweet corn. The other vine plant bed which is not in the picture will not have a cucumber structure but will be allowed to spread across another path in a bed of sweet corn. I have a total of four sweet corn beds this year planted two weeks apart for a harvest over four weeks or maybe six. Last year was the first year to finally get a sweet corn harvest due to raccoons.
I'm hoping to get the cucumbers, squash, zucchini, and chard started in the seed cells. It's a good way to get 100% germination planting. A lot of plants need to be planted. All the green peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, onions, and eggplants need to be planted. There's lots of work to be accomplish over the next couple weeks.
