Degenerates

Someone once said, " Even the most divine planning must eventually degenerate into work."

And as it goes, it was yet another laborious day in the garden for us, followed by yet another day of snow. Go figure. But as much as I complain about Spring hitting the snooze button a few too many times, I think the Lord must be looking out for us, because he's been giving us t-shirt weather to dig & plant in, then moisture the following day so we don't have to water!





Mike toiled with the digging of 2 new beds, (the completed one in the back of the picture as well as the one to the left of it), while I planted the asparagus and strawberries in the first bed from last week. Mike is now left with the expected aching back, while my hamstrings are pretty well shot from crouching to plant. (My back would have been aching too, had I just bent over to plant, but my protruding belly keeps me from breathing when I do that, which I've found is quite a necessary function to have, so crouching was the next best thing.) But can I just say that planting was like sweeping a knife through room-temperature BUTTER! I'm already LOVING the double-dig Mike's working so hard on, and I can only imagine what it will be like to pull weeds from these pillow soft beds!





While these may look a bit like crop circles, these holes are where the asparagus was planted in the north half of the bed. (32 roots in all) As I studied more about planting them, I learned that the roots have to be placed about 8 inches into the ground, but only covered by about 2 inches of dirt at a time. The tender spears aren't strong enough to push through that much dirt, so as they emerge, you cover them with an additional couple of inches, repeating the process until the hole is fully covered. I'm pretty bummed that we can't harvest any this year, since the roots need time to establish themselves, but I'm sure next year we'll have an abundant crop! It's funny, because I remember walking down the roads in Oakley, ID with my Grandma Martindale, stopping along the burrow pits to cut asparagus. I thought she was a crazy old lady then, and I never once ate her asparagus, but now that I've actually tried it and LOVE it, I think of her whenever I think of this unusal vegetable that grows in ditches along the side of the road...

The other half of the bed was reserved for these tiny little strawberry roots, some of which had started to grow already. We planted both June bearing and everbearing so that we could benefit from the big plump berries of the one-time Junies and the continual harvest of the everbearing. Again, I'm bummed that we won't be harvesting any this season, but I'm assured that by plucking off the blossoms to prevent them from producing this year, we'll guarantee an abundant crop next year!

We also had a big surprise to see our broccoli and cauliflower already germinate in the flats I just planted 5 DAYS AGO!!! I can't tell you how rewarding it is to see the fruits of our labor beginning to take shape. All this planning and preparing is starting to pay off with VISIBLE results, even though it's definitely degenerated into work...