My intern was here on Wednesday and the first thing we did was clean up the mess left from the pruning back in February. The branches had collected a lot of leaves and were killing the grass.
We got the branches raked up and she picked up all the large stones the plow had thrown in the grass. I intended to mow this little area with the push mower, as it hadn’t gotten done on Saturday. But alas, the little trick that would start it on Saturday was not working on Wednesday. So I gave up and put the mower away, until my friend can come look at it.
While I was messing around with the mower, my intern dug up and replanted the soapwort that had been in the Big garden. I’d decided to put it in the New West garden. We were to have rain Wednesday night, so hopefully it would do well.
Then we both tackled the huge lamium mat in the Big garden by the bulb area. It was the last thing needing to be moved to be able to plant peas. Before we could move it, we had to clean out the leaves and debris under the azalea.
I figured the lamium was an invasive plant, and there were lily of the valley and spiderwort hybrid under the azalea also. They are both invasive and they could all duke it out for control of the area, and I wouldn’t care.
So we brought 4 sled loads of lamium over and planted it in the corner and behind the azalea. I need to get more wood chips for mulch for several areas and this is one of them.
I took the last pot of bulbs out and put it into the other bulb area. That cleaned this corner out.
There are 3 or 4 horehound plants here and they will be moved to the tomato area north in this garden. At the end is the one surviving kale plant. I’ve NEVER had kale survive a winter before.
I just need to remove the hardware cloth, stakes and string and clean out the plant debris and then I can start working this garden to plant. Next week my helper is more available and I hope to get all this done and the peas planted.
This is the Big quince by the gate of the Big garden.
This is what all the tulips should have looked like, but the transplanted ones were not happy about being moved. Once these have finished I will find a place for them, out of the Big garden.
I went to check the rhubarb and found it nearly ready to harvest.
The comfrey next to it is doing well, and I will have to transplant several of these. Some will go back in the bed where they belong, and some will go to the little trees as understory.
In front of the rhubarb the north bed of garlic is doing well.
This is the south bed of garlic in the Big garden.
This is the garlic and shallot bed in the Small garden. All garlic is German Extra Hardy, a white hardneck that sends up lovely scapes. The shallots are French Gray.
By the time we finished the transplanting we were very tired. I’d been up since 1:30AM when a thunderstorm came through. But I couldn’t stop because my helper was coming and the neighbor across the street had asked me to get the metal posts out if her pasture.
I won’t be having cows for a couple years at least and she’d arranged for a local hayman to cut her field for hay. So we went over with the T post puller and got most of the posts out. The ones we left were covered in poison ivy and I wasn’t doing that!
After that the tree pruner arrived to do the little trees, but that’s another post.
Thursday is going to be a quiet day, as I did something to my left rotator cuff in my shoulder and it’s yelling at me.