Thank Heavens for Sudafed

The weekend list:

• Plant sale
• Add compost to raised beds
• Fertilize raised beds and pumpkin patch
• Close off vegetable garden to the chooks
• Plant salad greens (at last)
• Add compost and turn over vegetable garden
• Fertilize and weed perennial beds
• Mulch hosta bed with leaf mold
• Turn over working compost pile (when finished bin is empty)
• Move Golden Mops to new bed
• Plant new plants
• Pick up sticks in lawn and mow
• Prime the barn wall above the hosta bed
• Connect waterline to hose bib
• Plant arborvitae
• Transplant perennials to grape arbor bed

Remaining for Sunday:

• Plant salad greens (at last)
• Add compost and turn over vegetable garden
• Fertilize and weed perennial beds (4 of 7 left to do)
• Turn over working compost pile (when finished bin is empty)
• Move Golden Mops to new bed
• Plant new plants
• Prime the barn wall above the hosta bed
• Connect waterline to hose bib
• Plant arborvitae
• Transplant perennials to grape arbor bed --still to go, Lamb's Ear, Flax
  

Whew! We accomplished a lot today. If it weren't for Sudafed, I am pretty sure I wouldn't have been gardening, and that would have been a tragedy! It was a perfect gardening day, clear and sunny, but not too hot, with temps in the low 70s and a nice black-fly reducing breeze. The gardens are looking great, and the chickens have the vegetable garden looking better than I've ever seen it in the spring.

It was a wonderful day in the garden, and we are following it up with dinner at a local church supper, with friends accompanying. Phooey on the common cold.


More details on our gardening efforts today:

This third raised bed (on right) is completely overgrown with apple mint, which I love and I think makes the best mojitos, and an anemone of some kind, which is incredibly invasive, and not pretty enough to put up with bullying behavior. The mint, on the other hand, is so worth it. I'm going to dig some of the mint out and try a containment strategy, then we'll solarize this bed.

The Asiatic lily bed, sans red lily beetles. I checked periodically throughout the day, and crushed 8 of the little buggers (wearing my rubber gloves, of course) with my fingers. VERY satisfying.

The cart is full of weed barrier fabric from the Russian Sage hedge in front. After the mulch began to break down, was colonized by turf grass and creeping charlie, exactly what we used the product to prevent. We ripped it out this afternoon --I'll never use that useless product again!