Garden 2011: Planting Corn

Jo planting corn while Rusty watches intently. Dogs believe dog treats are the one and only small items ever contained within small bags. One year we when we weren't paying attention, Rusty dug up and ate several of the green beans Jo had planted. We kept a watchful eye on him this time.

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Garden 2011: Planting Corn

Garden 2011: Planting Spinach

Measure twice; plant once.

On Tuesday, Jo planted seeds of spinach, lettuce, chard and radishes.

All gardening activities must pass rigorous canine inspection. Rusty is handling that duty as Jo prepares to plant spinach seeds.

Opening the seed packet can be the hardest part of planting.

Spinach seeds.

Dropping spinach seeds into the furrow.

Gently raking soil on top of the newly planted seeds while being careful to not step on Bucket.  Following planting, Jo watered a little.  Now it's the seeds' turn to grow.

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Garden 2011: Planting Spinach

Garden 2011: Planting Potatoes

Jo planted potatoes on St. Patrick's day, our first planting for Garden 2011. We always divide gardening chores equally: Jo plants and I photograph and document her work.

Potatoes like lots of mulch.  Fortunately, this bed had mulch remaining from last fall.  As the potatoes sprout and grow, I'll need to apply more mulch.

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Garden 2011: Planting Potatoes

Afternoon Walk In The Snow

Jo and Rusty heading home on our afternoon walk.

We got a little bit of snow on Sunday, only a couple of inches.  Since then, we've enjoyed mostly sunny days, but our temperatures have remained mostly below freezing.  Not much of the snow has melted.

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Afternoon Walk In The Snow

Sweet Potato Harvest

We received our first frost of this fall Sunday morning. Therefore, Jo and I needed to get our sweet potatoes dug or risk them rotting underground. The first step in getting the potatoes out of the ground was removing the wire cover. Deer have been in the garden feeding on the protruding sweet potato vines recently, making wire removal much easier. We didn't have to trim off the vines to expose the wire.

This plant with a couple of modest sized sweet potatoes was about as good as our harvest got. Some plants had no edible-sized potatoes. We've had paltry sweet potato harvest for the past few years. We've also enjoyed some great harvest growing this variety. I don't know what the problem is. We need to do some sweet potato growing research and, maybe, change varieties.

"Where's mine?" says Bucket. She's stationed herself between Jo and the bucket of potatoes, hoping for a sweet potato treat either intentional or accidental.

Rusty is watch, ready to join Bucket if Jo starts handing out sweet potatoes. Both dogs got an undersized potato when we were through digging. Giving it to them any sooner would have guaranteed and increased level of pestering by the dogs as we dug.

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Sweet Potato Harvest

Our 2009 Gardening Season Begins

Jo is weeding the bed where our red potatoes will soon be planted.


The veggie gardening season of 2009 has officially begun. On the one hand, it's terrific that we can finally get outside and get to gardening. On the other hand, ahead lies about six months of almost daily work out in the garden.

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Our 2009 Gardening Season Begins

Asparagus Bed

Our poor, neglected garden......

Getting things flanged up in the garden in the fall is always a problem for Jo and I.

• We've put in a lot of time out there over the spring, summer and early fall. When garden activities that must be done come to an end, we're ready for a break from the garden.
• The weather starts turning funky and there are more days that we cannot work outside.
• Cutting firewood (and all the associated splitting, hauling, stacking, etc.) is a more pressing priority on the days when we can do outside work.
• The days are getting shorter and there's less daylight for working outdoors.
• Late fall is one of our busiest times of the year for doing shows, maintaining inventory, etc.

Anyway, those are our excuses, excuses, excuses for not putting our garden to bed for the winter the way we really should, but on Sunday Jo finally made a start on our garden "To Do" list by cleaning up the asparagus bed. She removed all the freeze-killed fern tops and spread a layer of composted manure on the bed. The bed still needs to be mulched heavily. We should also go ahead and add a border to this bed while the asparagus is dormant.

My outdoor activity for the day was splitting a little firewood and loading the log hoop on the porch. I can't believe I was out splitting firewood in January wearing a t-shirt. Our temperature made it all the way up to 71º. Very strange. The skies fluctuated between partly and mostly cloudy with s strong and gusty south wind blowing.

We didn't even have a fire in the wood stove on Sunday, though we probably could have used just a little bit of heat during the evening. The problem is: It's difficult to get a wood stove to put out just a little bit of heat. I tried taking the chill off the damp air inside the house Saturday evening and ended up with the inside temperature up around 75º.

Asparagus Bed

Lettuce Planted

Photo by Marvin April 18, 2007

Jo set out some transplants for our first crop of lettuce. She also planted some lettuce seeds into the garden for the second. Rusty supervised.

Lettuce Planted

Helping In The Garden

	From March, 2007

Eager and reliable help in the garden is always appreciated. Bucket and Rusty are always eager to go to the garden, but their reliability is suspect.


The basic personalities and priorities in life of the two dogs come through loud and clear in these photos. Rusty is the one who craves affection and has come over to Jo for a hug. Bucket wants to eat something and thinks the plastic bag may contain something edible instead of the strawberry transplants that it actually holds. (Click on the photo of Bucket to enlarge it and you'll see that there's no doubt that eating is what she has on her mind.)

Helping In The Garden

New Strawberries Planted

On Wednesday Jo got the strawberry plants set out into the strawberry beds, then covered the beds with wire so that the new plants don't become deer food.

It's hard to believe that these scruffy little strawberries will one day produce the berries we love to eat so much.

From March, 2007

New Strawberries Planted

No Strawberries This Year

One strawberry bed done and one to go.



I seriously doubt that we get any strawberries into the freezer this year -- not unless we buy some berries from a roadside produce vendor. After several years of good production, very few of our strawberry plants made it through last summer. I don't know if it was something we did or didn't do, the extreme dryness of last summer or if it was just the plants time to go into decline -- that happens with strawberries -- but it was time to start over with some new berry plants this year.

Jo ordered the new plants and was expecting to hear something regarding their shipping date. Instead, Federal Express delivered them Tuesday. The new arrivals needed to be planted in the garden ASAP, but of course, we had not done any of the necessary bed preparation yet. The strawberry beds were full of weeds. Time to start revising our daily agenda.

Jo began working on the beds, turning the soil over with a spading fork. She looked as if she was enjoying herself so much that I just couldn't resist joining in the fun. We eventually worked out a system where I turned over the soil and she broke up the soil and removed the weeds. Later, Jo went back and raked down the beds.

Turning over those beds should have been relatively easy. The soil has been mulched and amended enough that it's fairly loose -- as compared to the rest of our soil, anyway -- and we removed the rocks when we originally build the beds. However, a nearby sweet gum tree had found the nutrient rich soil of the strawberry beds to be an excellent location for sending its roots. Everyone knows that trees and gardens really don't mix, but having a couple of trees around the perimeter adds to our enjoyment of the garden, so they will stay, although the fate of that sweet gum was debatable while I was fighting with its roots.

We got both strawberry beds turned and raked down. Wednesday Jo will haul a little manure and plant the new strawberries. We may get a few berries this year, but it will be next year before they really start producing fruit.

The worst thing about the whole project was that even after all that time and work, I didn't get to check an item off my "To Do" list. Dealing with the strawberry beds hadn't even been added to my list yet. Oh, well. It's done.

No Strawberries This Year

Warm Wednesday Afternoon

With the temperature getting close to eighty degrees on Wednesday afternoon, Jo changed out of her sweatshirt before we took off on our afternoon walk. We took the camera on the walk because on Tuesday I'd spotted a dog-tooth violet bloom, the first we'd seen this spring. We didn't have the camera with us Tuesday, so we wanted to photograph the bloom Wednesday. However, the bloom was gone.

Warm Wednesday Afternoon