We're still here!

I apologize for the long absence from blogging -- but the garden is going strong!

March 22nd, the boys from Sigma Beta Rho came, helped dig over the whole veggie bed, spread all the compost I had made, add several bags of topsoil & some amendments, lay out a drip-watering system, haul off a LOT of trash, and set in some plants. End result on the left. (Built-up veggie bed held in by cardboard because request for wooden beams has not yet made it through the DESC budget process.)

Laying in the watering system. I haven't used it yet -- every time I begin to think "I'm going to have to water pretty soon" -- it rains. When I do have to water, though, it will go straight to the roots, not on the leaves, and we'll have less risk of downy mildew, I hope.

Of course, if things stay as cool as they've been so far, we may never have to worry about downy mildew.








Setting in the first plants. Lesson #1 of the year: Do harden-off plants you've started indoors, letting them transition to the outdoors slowly. A lot of my first starts didn't make it because I just moved them straight from indoors to outdoors. Ones properly hardened-off are thriving.



That would have been 20 hours of work for one person! And that's only if I was still as young as these guys!




The garden grew slowly over the next month, but as soon as things warmed up just a little it shot up like it had been coiling its springs. Below is a photo taken almost exactly two months later: