Getting the garden ready

This past week has been beautiful. Yesterday it was in the 80's and windy. Today it is raining and talking maybe snow showers. Only thing growing in the garden right now is the garlic that I planted in the fall to over winter in the ground and the blueberry bushes we planted in October.

I was going to plant the lettuce, snap peas, beets, onions, and herbs this coming week, but it is going to be cold over night (20's) and I do not have row covers, so I will just wait a week.

I moved the homemade trellises we have for our peas and has to redo the netting on one of them. I fell in the garden and grabbed a hold of the netting to stop myself, so it all ripped out.

Our homemade pvc pipe trellises for our peas. I need to remember to cap the ends this year. We had hornet nests in them last year. I put up one store bought netting last year to see how well it held up. Pretty good. I have a ton of twine, so I used that one the second trellis, the one I messed up with my fall. Matt had fun with a sledge hammer on the compost bin in the picture. My dad overfilled it and it broke.

Twine trellis all finished. Took me a bit to put it together, but it works. The one I made last year did wear down a bit on the bottom row, but that last row was very tight. I made it a bit looser this year, so hoping it does not break.

I cleaned up all the straw left over from last year. It revealed some very nice black dirt. Love it! I will reuse what I raked up to help keep the weeds down. Plus it is decomposing, so it will help the dirt.

At the end of the week, Steve is going to till up the garden. Ya I know there is so much out there about no till gardens, but my garden dirt gets super compacted down from all the snow we get every winter. Plus the original soil is clay. We made the garden bigger, so I still have some clay soil in it to mix in with the good compost. There are also chopped up leaves that I sort of mixed in the compost and soil in the fall that are nicely decomposing. Need to mix those in more.

Soil testing and adding needed amendments if needed comes next. Last year we added lime to the garden and it did wonders for it. I have always fertilized the plants, but the lime helped change the ph levels to something the plants liked more.

Oh check out my new "friends" in my garden. I love gnomes. I got the one on the left for mother's day last year or the year before, the one on the right I got for Christmas (Phil from Duck Dynasty). Finally the one in the middle my hubby got me a week or so ago. He saw it at Walmart and knew I would love it. He even had it strapped in the front seat of his truck when he brought it home. I opened the passenger side door and laughed when I saw it. It stands 3 feet tall.