Garden Planted

Chuck got most of the garden planted last night.  We don't usually have a whole lot of luck with our gardens, especially since we moved to Arkansas.  We did much better in Alaska.  But then, I was the sole gardener in Alaska and Chuck is the sole gardener here.  Hmmm.....

I love planting and harvesting.  All that other stuff, not so much.  I like watering and fertilizing, and I like 'tending' things, like tomato plants, but I hate weeding.  And I'm not real crazy about 'preparing' some of our bounty, when things DO produce.  Trimming ends and cutting up green beans.  Boring!  Washing beet greens or spinach to get every bug & speck of dirt off.  Tedious!!!  I love cukes & tomatoes and all that stuff that requires little care once harvested.

Chuck worked hard to beef up our soil this year.  He had it so screwed up a few years ago.  Someone told him that horse manure was excellent for your garden, and to till in mulched up leaves.  WRONG!  Horse poop is the worst thing to put in your garden.  To make matters worse, since we had an abundant supply, he figured 'if a little is good, a lot will be better'. What didn't burn up' from whatever chemical process took place, grew into unrecognizable vegetables.  We had round cucumbers that looked like golf balls.  The yellow squash & zucchini had skin about 1/4 inch thick that resembled Armadillo armor.  No amount of steaming, boiling or beating with a mallet would make it edible!

The past couple of years, he has continued planting and has only tilled in a bit of fresh dirt each year, waiting for all the horse poop to just 'go away'.  Last year he did add some "dirt" that he acquired from the Water Treatment Plant.  I don't EVEN wanna talk about my feelings on that!!  This year he decided to get serious and it seems to me that just maybe he got it right, but only time will tell.  He brought home a load of GOOD top soil, a load of sand and bought copious quantities of Steer Manure (which is what I always used in Alaska, btw).  He got it all mixed in and tilled and re-tilled and finally got started planting.  We decided not to plant too much stuff, but I might just sneak a few plants home to add to the mix.  We only bought tomatoes, although we got several varieties, and green bell peppers, Serrano peppers, zucchini and onion sets.  We use all the onions at the Scallion stage.  For seeds we got lots of beets....for the greens.  OMG, how we both love beet greens!  I like beets real well, but he doesn't so they never get to grow up and be real beets.  LOL  Also got spinach (not sure why, as it always bolts before we can eat it), swiss chard and green beans.  Oh, and a couple more strawberry plants to add to the 3 I got last year, that actually survived!  I know that within the week I will be bringing home some cucumber plants because I simply must!! The only thing better than a sun warm, freshly picked tomato is a fresh picked cucumber!  Ahhhhh......TASTY!!!!!!

Tonight he will transform the dirt in my flower beds and we will plant my flowers and hope they do much better as well.  Last year, I bought a lot of my flowers before I left for Alaska and he intended to plant them for me, but never did get around to it.  Many of them died in their little containers.  This year, we'll get them planted before I leave!  He's very good about watering every day, so they should be safe:)

Hopefully we've got our shit together (sorry, I couldn't resist) and our gardening endeavors will work out marvelously!!!