Modern Geekery

I called around yesterday to see if any place in the area had an auger that I could use when the fruit trees arrive. While I still have a vague sense that using a mechanical tool to dig the holes for the trees is somehow cheating, I’ve worn myself out two weekends in a row now trying to dig out the privet stumps that dot the area in which I want to plant. The auger rental is not terribly expensive – 75$ for the weekend – and the time saved may well be worth it.

That all aside, Elder Daughter and I had a good afternoon working in the garden. We extended the garden bed by another foot in width (east-west) and about 4 feet in length. This involved digging up and transplanting the grass, adding about a 40 lbs of mushroom compost, and then covering it over with a tarp to kill the remain grass and weeds. Then, we worked another scant 40 lbs of compost into half of the original garden bed and planted a row of radishes and a row of kohlrabi. We also mixed up compost and a little potting soil and filled several cell trays. In those, we planted more kohlrabi and radishes, to transplant into the new area of the bed later, and some of our flowers – zinnias, purple coneflower and statice. We also planted two different varieties of sunflowers into peat cups, since sunflowers don’t transplant so well. The cell trays went under the new cold frame, since its a bit early for all but the radishes and kohlrabi.

Once we got all the bed preparation and planting done, Elder Daughter played in the sandbox and around in the backyard while I dug out two more stumps. What I didn’t get done was sheet mulching the area in the west side yard that will become the flower bed. There’ll be time for that later.

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