May 2018

May 6, 2018
April flew by without much gardening going on. The weather continued to be cold and snowy up until the middle of April. The cold weather continued after that but no rain for April. Just a half inch of moisture in the month of April put us behind since April's average is 3 inches. The rain catch water tank barely had any water in it by the end of April. Finally as May crept into the days, the temperature blasted up into the 80s which now is abnormally warm. This looks to be a garden season of extremes.

The fence panels that were the ICON of the garden were all but destroyed by vandals last Fall so fence repair was on the schedule for April.

Once again the free fence panels from S&W fencing came to the rescue. I picked up enough panels to repair this section of the fence.  It looks like redwood but I think it's just painted wood.  Cedar maybe. The next section over was repaired with cedar planks. With the fence repaired I can now turn my attention to the garden beds. One bed is planted with potatoes. I always have potatoes that never get eaten and turn into mushy sprouts. I will not plant as many thing year and harvest them earlier.  I do like the early small potatoes. I might try canning some of those for winter consumption.

I spent this last Saturday mowing the grass at 35th street and spreading it over two beds at Terra Nova Gardens. That grass will be buried in the bed before planting. Another layer of grass clippings will be spread over the top of the bed as mulch. I'm hoping to get more mulch from my Urban Ranch yards for that. 

Right when I need to do the most work, a family function will take me away for five days.  I expect those five days will be perfect days for gardening and probably the day I get back rain will start delaying planting again. It's seems to happen every year. I'm not too distraught this year. The garden will get done when it gets done. I've discovered that I don't always have to try to be the earliest one to have a tomato or pepper.


May 9, 2018
Spent some time at Terra Nova Gardens. The yard grass clippings from UR yards were just enough to enrich the digging and cover the bed before planting.  Here is the bed before work began.

 I didn't start that many cabbage seedlings this year.