The Garden is IN!

We've got a fairly large garden that is being used by three families this summer, so it seemed wise to prune back the golden willow on the north side of the garden. It grows like a weed and provides too much shade, so every few years Jim gives it a good hair cut. His brother-in-law gave him a hand. Or some advice.



Once the branches had been hauled off, Jim brought in the heavy equipment, first bringing in numerous loads of manure while the manure-makers looked on.



Then the rotovator got hooked up to the tractor.



Then black plastic. Saves a lot of weeding, and the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant in particular appreciate the extra heat.



This is one of the Manitoba plants we grew from seed. About half the tomatoes I planted we grew ourselves, the rest came from a greenhouse a couple miles up the road.



We place a piece of brick or rock to the north side of every bedding plant in the plastic, and as you may have seen in the above picture, boards and tires are part of the plan as well. All of these keep the wind from whipping up the plastic and ripping up the plants. Often the tomatoes in the middle of the tires grow even better than the ones just on the plastic! We put old boards along the edges of the plastic, especially along the outside edge of the garden. There I can run the wheels of the riding mower on the boards and save a lot of hand trimming.

So now that everything is in, it's just a matter of keeping things watered. We'll be weeding and mulching the un-plasticked areas over the next few weeks as things start to sprout.