Spring has Sprung
… and with it my back has begun to ache. yesterday we began, a bit belatedly, to start working and amending the soil in the raised beds. Yesterday, I spaded in a thick layer of peat, dehydrated manure (man, did THAT stink), and perlite. Tomorrow and Wednesday, I get up super-early to head out to Fairmount Park to pick up a few bags of compost. All five of the beds need some, so I’ll probably (sigh) be out on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday as well, and spending the late afternoons after work in the back yard digging away.
Not that I’m complaining of course. There’s something really intrinsically satisfying about getting down in the dirt and growing your own produce. Last year, we had a large enough tomato crop to have fresh maters well into September/October, and canned almost enough to carry us through to spring. in fact, we just used our last jar of ‘maters last week. If we’d been a little more diligent with the kale (and actually built a cold frame like we talked about), we would have had greens all winter too! This year, I’m ahead of the game: it looks like I’ve found some used aluminum-frame storm windows, which I hope to pick up this afternoon. I’ll set those aside for winter. We’re planning our winter crops this weekend (i hope). Mike McGrath has soem good suggestions.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I didn’t realize you could get compost at Fairmount Park. Where does one do this? Not that I need any, usually a small bag of dehydrated chicken manure does all the fertilizing my onions need.