Friday, May 1, 2020

May Day

I spent a few hours today replanting lettuce & arugula from thinnings. I'm planting them in places where beans, tomatoes, etc. will go.  I'll pull them out when I need the space. We had a ton of rain the past day and a half, the bed drained nicely.  The soil is pretty good, not too many clumps of clay to break up.  I noticed a lot of things that looked like seedlings coming up I think it's from the soil I had delivered. I noticed two marigold seedlings so I kept them. Pretty much everything else got pulled out or turned over.

I also finished making all the plant markers for the sunny bed. We have a slate patio & chunks of slate always cleave off during the winter so I break them up and write plant names on them with a paint pen.

I have all the materials for the shade bed ordered & ready to pick up at Home Depot. Steve's truck is at the dealership for maintenance so I have to wait to get it. Hopefully this afternoon we can go (I'd rather not go on a Saturday morning) we're supposed to have a few days of nice weather so I'd like to get started on it.  I think I worked out the bed scheme. It's hard not being able to go to the store & make notes. I'm not redoing the sunny bed design.  I don't like the wood and how it's holding together. We don't have access to redwood or cedar here so I used untreated fir. For the new bed I'm used galvanized corrugated sheet metal (for roofing) & building a pressure treated wood frame around it like this person:
how to: galvanized garden beds

I'm also putting trellises and hoops for a low tunnel on the bed at the same time so there were a lot of notes & calculations. (Lord help me!)

The weather in April was cooler & wetter than normal. I'm hoping it warms up a little & doesn't go straight to '80's. Fingers crossed.