On Friday I was up at 4AM and got my post up. I got a load in the dishwasher and the house closed up against the heat and was out in the garden to harvest by 7AM. I got set up to clean the onions, and brought around equipment for cleaning out the New Herb garden and was done by 7:30AM.
My helper friend and general helper weren’t to arrive until 8AM and I got bored waiting. There were 2 empty sleds sitting there so I started pulling the really tall stuff out of the South garden. I filled both sleds before they arrived. You can see some of the flowers again.
I had filled a tote with the row of Cortland storage onions and my general helper and I brought it around to the back of the house where my helper friend and I would be working on them. She was going to be pulling the tall stuff out of the New Herb garden.
It took us an hour to wash the onions and get them braided and hanging in the woodshed alcove.
This is what my general helper accomplished while we were doing that.
Once we’d cleaned up the onion mess, I realized I ought to put up the new thermometer on the front porch before the sun was there.
Once it was in place we realized it needed adjusting, so we took it down. We messed around with it for half an hour but we couldn’t find a small enough straight head screwdriver to turn the tiny screw. It was even smaller than my eyeglasses screwdriver.
So I thought I’d return it. I contacted the company later to inquire if this was a common problem with this item and they requested more info, so I sent it off. By 5:30PM this is what it read, even though the real temperature was 85F and the humidity was around 50%. Not good…
Once we’d given up on the thermometer, my helper friend and I headed to the barn to get the truck. The next project was to get the netting off the Little Trees II.
We got all the cordwood that held down the netting loaded into the truck. Then we took off the netting. The tallest little trees were quite bowed down from the netting. We got it rolled and into the truck and headed to the woodshed to unload.
The next thing was to get the 33’ x 65’ piece of netting onto the clothesline. We got it on and there was some room to spare for the 4 pieces of netting on the other Little Trees.
First real tomato harvest
My general helper had continued to clean out in the New Herb garden and it was so cool to see herbs again. We could get down most of the walkways again. There’s still a ton of weeding to do in the beds before we can prep them and plant and mulch. But this is a big improvement!
I was so exhausted it was a couple hours before I could stand long enough for a shower, once they left at noon. Then I went to bed and slept 2½ hours. I was back in bed by 9PM and slept all night.
On Saturday my general helper will be here at 7:30AM. I want to get the netting off the other Little Trees and onto the clothesline. Then I need to make a run to the dump. Once that’s done, we will be working in the New Herb garden planting the next row and mulching both rows that are done. It’s to be comfortable until about 11AM so I hope to get a lot done.