First Weekend of Summer 2012

Well after some torrential rain, something crazy like 4 inches in 24 hours, my garden is thoroughly soaked. Yay! Of course, that's lousy weather for setting up a new beehive so we put them in the greenhouse at our main garden site in Wilmot. We'll probably give them a week to settle in at least before popping the lid and seeing how they are getting on. The bees at the house here are growing in number and activity in front of the hive is reassuring that they have a healthy population building.

Steve's been in bed for most of the weekend sick. He managed to get some energy to finish the wheel hoe blade for me and promptly went back to bed. Right now he's getting packed to go to the city for work but I'm still not convinced he'll make it. Poor guy came home on Friday not feeling great, I think he's got the flu. Fever and chills, achy, heavy feeling chest...hope I don't get it. I don't have time to spend 2 days sleeping. With this recent rain the weeds will be growing along with the veggies.

I'll include some pics of the wheel hoe in action. Next plan is to make some kind of a plow or ridging attachment that we can use for hilling potatoes. I'm going to take it out to the main garden this week and try it in the nice loose ground there. It worked very well in the flower garden at home but less well in the matted and rooty ground I'm using for veg beside my house. Once the hoe has passed it's easier to go over it a second time so I guess that means you know what we'll be doing this week.

Tiny Tim Tomatoes

Our Shed has Jubilee Tomatoes and Marigolds

Pots of Grapefruit Mint from cuttings 

Red oakleaf and romaine lettuces

Outwit poor soil by planting in pots and bags

The stirrup hoe attachment

Steve demonstrating the new wheel hoe

You can see the square shape of the blade

The wheel hoe runs along the ground with the stirrup part under the soil 1-2 inches, cutting off the weed tops. It does a good job of getting right up to the edges of a bed and now that we have a platform to bolt any tool to, we can get creative. The hoe blade is shaprened on both sides for an easy back and forth motion and seems to handle small rocks with no problem. This is going to be a very useful tool for the longer rows at the main garden.

As you can see, we are creative with space. Pots tucked away on a deck or bags of soil in a frame, you can grow things anywhere! Our Tiny Tim tomatoes are well suited to pots and are setting fruit and the bags may look ugly now but will soon be covered in foliage so they won't be as noticeable.

This week I have to get weeding, plant more spuds, peas and carrots, and babysit 30 hours or so , it's going to be fun! Chris gets to clean out gutters...Joy! And we fixed the leak in the downstairs bathroom so no more wet floor. Gotta run and get kids off to school, they have 2 days of school this week and then they are done for the summer.