Friday, April 30, 2010

Storms a-comin'

We planted one of the raised beds with some bush beans and lightly covered them with hay. We treated the grape arbor to a top dressing of hay around as well. The other 2 short beds hold 4 tomato plants each and are mulched with hay as well.

I even tried...totally wasting my time and effort...to till through the end of the main garden again. We shoveled in sand and tilled it into the fist-sized clods and clumps of beeswax clay muck :o( I don't see potatoes getting planted at all. It's just crap out there. And with the storms moving in again, on already wet enough ground, that area will be a swamp by the end of the weekend :o(

Ugh. I really hate this clay. Go ahead and tell me I'm spoiled with the rich black soil back north that pretty much plants itself. I am. I admit it. I could just about toss seeds out by hand-scattering and have a terrific garden. No top dressing, no fertilizer added...just black soil...and everything grew. And grew well.

Down here you need SKILL to garden. You have to have a PhD in agricultural science and botany. And chemistry for that matter with all the extras you have to add and side dress everything with.

I have no skill. Nothing particularly useful anyway. I guess I need to switch over to learning about any wild edibles and foraging techniques. Sure can't cultivate my food. Gotta go rustic to eat feed myself in this clay :o)

Either way, we're getting ready to settle in and lock down for the day I think. We'll likely do a ton of just reading and crafting today. Can't even watch a DVD...I finally ran out of batteries for the remote...and these new machines don't let you do much with manual buttons except play and pause. Most our DVD's go to the menu and you need to toggle down to the Play button. LOL...advances in technology has limited our video watching it seems.

We're in the middle of a few read-alouds here...Safe in His Care (a Rod & Staff book, very good), Little House on The Prairie, and Tucket's Travels (Gary Paulsen...we like his books. This one has all 5 books in the series in 1 volume, great reading for a rainy day).

What are you reading?

3 comments:

MyBulletinBoard said...

Well, I was wondering where you were this morning. It sure does take a lot of work to get a garden going in that kind of dirt. Do you have any free sources of sand? We go to the county barn here. They just dump it out and we shovel it up in six-gallon buckets. Slow, but we're gettin' there.

Hope the tomatoes work for you this year. Hope ours do, too. We're giving them one more shot. The cool nights just don't help -- but, it's great for the A/C bill. Won't complain there. Take care, Liz

Becky said...

Hi Deanna - a friend of mine (up here in Canada) was telling me that she was looking into straw bale gardening .... would that be something that might work where you are?

Naturally Blessed Mama said...

Yep, we have that lovely red clay here, and I hate it, that's why I just did the square foot garden beds, and didn't even mess with what was already here. Yeah, the initial cost was a bit hefty, but now as long as I continue to compost regularly, I won't have to buy another thing to ammend the soil, just add a little compost every year, and start planting. I'll take pictures of our garden and post this weekend. Our potatoes are growing well in a couple old tires, with just some plain ole potting soil with some of our already mixed compost.

We're reading Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin, that's our biography this month, and then we have some bible stories, and my oldest is reading another biography called Phoebe the spy. My personal reading is a book called The Ordways. All good reads.

Have a blessed day!

Jer.6:16

Jeremiah 6:16
Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.

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