The garden bug

The gardening bug has hit me hard.

We’ve had beautiful weather in Rhode Island for the last few weeks. I took last week off from work and spent the time with the girls at the house. I had to catch up on a lot of work I’ve been meaning to get to. I did a lot of concrete work on an old stone fence by the yard. After that I started gardening.

Even though we have a good size yard, it has never been used for gardens. The previous owners kept horses. Needless to say whenever you start digging into virgin soil, you never know what you’ll find. Much of the soil is horrible! I have pulled out large granite rocks. The soil is sandy in some spots, muddy in others. It seems that when the back was filled, they used construction fill, then covered it with sod. A good economic plan for raising horses, not good for farming.

My pitchfork and I ended up double tilling a 30X30 square and planted the usual: corn, tomatoes, peas, beans and lots of greens. By the barn I tilled a 5X30 square (much better soil, not much good afternoon sun though) and plan to plant cucumbers there. By the stone fence I tilled another 5X30 (good soil and good sun) and planted about 10 different pepper plants.

This weekend I plan to enlarge the 30x30 some more and plant more corn.