Another cold blast and I am getting gardening fever

Last year we didn't get to raise much garden and what we did we started very late. I was still thankful for that fresh taste of tomatoes and peppers. This year I am so excited to get started. It is cold out but my garden books are all out on the table. I think it is making DH concerned.

Not only is it cold here, but it's snowing! And, they're still calling for several more inches. I want to mess in my garden as well.

I think it really is a fever. About this time each year I start to itch.

     

LOL The ground is frozen here, there is an inch of snow covering the ground and Dad was out in his shop today changing the oil and tuning up his tiller, after he placed his seed order.

Yes it is a fever, and we get it too.

It's sweeping the land! We got our seeds and have been looking over other seed catalogs and wishing for spring. We will soon be starting some seeds.

We got our garden tilled up and ready and then it snowed last night. Yep, snow! I hear it is supposed to get better beginning tomorrow. I'm so ready for warmer temps. and being able to get out in that garden and get my hands dirty.

You and me both!

Me three!

I started doing stuff in it last week. Now it's snowing again and is going to be cold and windy tomorrow!

I plowed the garden areas, in early March, then we had freezing rain. Then it warmed up again, and I grafted some nut trees and started some seeds. Then it got cold and we had more snow and freezing rain. This past Saturday I spread 200 pounds of lime in the main garden and the corn patch, today we had snow, tonight the temps are dropping into the teens, then Thursday it's supposed to rain. I'm starting to see a pattern.

The chickens are loving it.

I definitely have the fever too. Unfortunately it has rained so much here, last week my garden area was under water, that it will be a few weeks before I can till. I am considering having a local guy bring his plow and plow it up. He doesn't charge much and I haven't had that done in a few years.
Yesterday I started seeds & have 4 sweet potato halves now in cups of water to hopefully get some slips started.

I usually start my sweet potatoes for slips in December.  That way I can have them growing in my kitchen window for pretty greens in the winter.

We are trying to get things organized and set up so that I can start to garden for the year.  Slow going sometimes.

If it is too wet to till, it is too wet to plow.
As long as the soil has good earthworm activity, and can be tilled to 4 inches deep, leave it alone, the roots from most crops will open it deeply, and naturally. I plowed my gardens this year to break up the hardpan that was only an inch below the surface.

I have been pretty much no till for years now.  It started with a garden that I tended behind an apartment complex.  There was just no way to get a plow down there.  I rented a big tiller once, but it was too expensive and too hard for me.  Then the arthritis kicked in worse and that was impossible.  So I learned a new way.  I just pile on the mulch and pile it on. 

In the spring I pull back the mulch and do a little "lifting" with the edge of a hoe (it is the only hoeing I do all year) or even my tater fork, if I am planting something bigger like a tater.  The hoe just makes the groove for the seeds and I pull the soil back over.  Once things sprout the mulch is tucked back around.  For things like tomato plants and cabbage starts, I just poke a hole through the mulch layer with a dibble.  

My favorite mulches are chopped leaves, straw, wood shavings, animal bedding (side dressed as a mulch I never even compost it), non sprayed grass clippings and best of all seed free weeds of varieties that will not root after you pull them.  On new spots I first add a layer of well soaked (in water) cardboard or a section of the local newspapers (which I get from recycling folks).  Either of those choke out grass and weeds if you mulch on top to hold them in place from a wind.   IF I get a weed - I let it flourish - at least until it is tall enough to easily get my whole hand around.  Then I wait for a rainy day and tug gently.  It comes up by the roots and is laid on top of the mulch. 

I have a nice little Mantis tiller.  I haven't used it in a long while and the last time was to mix amendments into a new empty bed that I made by choking out an area with a staked out tarp over the fall and into spring.

No true compost pile for this girl either.  I am too broken to turn one.  I compost most things directly on the mulch layer.  I dig little holes around the garden if I have bone scraps or similar (most things go to dogs or chickens first) that adds calcium.  Feathers from butcher day are added by pulling back the mulch and spreading them down then pulling the mulch back on.  The only "pile" I had was raspberry canes, small sticks and such.  I made a three side bin from a cut cattle panel then toss stuff in - chopped small. The bin is actually IN the garden somewhere in the middle of a row.  In a couple of years I move the bin to a new spot and plant a crop of squash around the old bin. (You could use other climbers.)  The pumpkins climb over the bin and keep it moist and shaded.  After the squash year I move any resistant sticks to the new bin and rake the rest out in a new mulch layer right around the area where it sat.  

After a few years of this "laziness" the garden has deep loam on top, loads of worms and other good stuff, soaks up water like a sponge and seldom has a weed.  I would never go back.

Once my soil supports a healthy worm population and has loam mixed deeply I plan to transition to no till also. I have plenty of leaves available from 9+ acres of woods.

I intend to continue adding leaves, grass clippings and anything else I can compost to my raised beds. When I planted my onions I moved the mulch, planted the bulbs, covered with soil and reapplied the mulch. I have a lot of leaves and wood chips to apply to the beds after I get them planted.

just remember that wood takes up nitrogen as it is breaking down (the natural bacteria use the nitrogen to break down the woody materials)

Yep that's why I pull it aside, then add the other stuff to the soil, then pull it back on top. I try to keep the wood mulch on top but I don't worry too much because my manure is mostly from the chickens. This will be my last composter full of chicken manure compost cooking this summer.

chicken manure should be "hot" enough to overcome tree limbs LOL, sounds like you have a great plan working.

12acrehome wrote:just remember that wood takes up nitrogen as it is breaking down (the natural bacteria use the nitrogen to break down the woody materials)

As long as the wood is on top things are fine.  Mixing the chips in the soil is when the nitrogen deficiency begins.  Otherwise forests would all be nitrogen deficient.

LOL there is a thin (very thin) layer that is deficient in N2 due to never having a source of nitrogen.