Pulling Weeds

I spent the entire weekend pulling weeds. I actually did a lot this weekend with family and friends, but it seems I spent the entire weekend pulling weeds. Since we do everything as natural as possible around here, we pull the weeds by hand. I don't use any tools except my hands. No gloves, no nothing. My hands are beginning to become quite calloused. It's funny because in the winter time I spend a lot of time doing craft stuff, but that type of stuff is gentle on my hands, whereas pulling weeds will put a callous on my hands quicker than I could believe!

Everything in the garden is doing well, aside from a patch of radishes I planted a few weeks ago. Looks like they are being eaten by something. The strawberry cage is completely reinforced now, thanks to my husband, who did most of the work by hand, no tools of any kind involved. Looks like the strawberries may be coming back this year.

The asparagus is looking really nice now, too. It took forever to come up and was plagued with weeds (most of the pulling we did was in the area of the asparagus) but it looks like they'll bounce back.

I recently canned some peas that I grew in the front yard. I'll be freezing some this week. I'm hoping to have an even balance of canned and frozen peas, but we'll see. The vines themselves are going strong and only in the last few days have begun turning brown in spots. I'm hoping to plant another round of peas later and hope they take off before it gets too cold.

My pumpkins are overtaking the front yard. They've grown over the onions, when they were supposed to grow in the direction of the sunflowers. The onions don't seem to mind, though.

Also ahead this week I've got to freeze some lovage and dry some sage and lemon balm.

I'll be writing more in this blog during the month ahead, too, so stay tuned!

Digging In

Since last week a lot has gone on in the garden, though hardly anything has been planted. I did plant about half of my potatoes and start my pepper seeds. I planted potatoes in the garden bed next to the house. I think the front and side of the house will look interesting with some potato bushes growing there. I'm not concerned about hurting any of the foundation or the sidewalk because I allowed for enough space for the potatoes.

I also started green pepper, hot pepper, cayenne, and banana peppers. I am still considering starting jalapeños. I think it will depend on how far we get with the garden beds. We've gotten farther than I thought we would have by now.

It took me six hours to dig in my front horizontal bed this weekend. The bed measures approximately 18 feet by 6 feet. There are so many weed seeds in the bed, since the entire front yard was weeds when we moved in, that I decided to dig the whole thing to expose the seeds for the birds. Plus the bed looked like a giant mud puddle, with uneven divets everywhere, so I wanted to get that a little more even-looking so the neighbors don't start to complain.

My husband and my dad took out the giant caterpillar in the back, as I had been so lovingly calling an overgrown and neglected hedge that separated our yard and the neighbor's yard. Our next-door neighbors, on either side, are really awesome. On the side with the hedge, my husband and the guy who lives there are going to build a fence together. Ripping out the hedge gave us hundreds of extra square feet to work with- space for asparagus, some apple trees, and more room in the garden bed in the back.

My husband also dug in the back bed in the same manner as described for the front bed. The back bed in question is about 12 feet by 7 feet.

Earlier this week I dug in a smaller bed on the side of the house and also raked up most of the space under the grape vines, getting ready to plant oregano there when the weather warms up. As far as the smaller side bed, I'm still debating between herbs and peppers.