Various Preparations

I've completed several tasks over the past several days. Lumping into a preparation category makes sense to me.

After cleaning up the garden, I had a faily large pile of cleared material -- grass from between the beds that was fully dead and tomato vines. There was also a small accumulation of kitchen compost. My experience is that it all just does better if I shred it first before trying to start it off truly composting. I bought a used chipper shredder, a Murray (the company has since been sold to someone who ended the line). For the past several seasons (I don't remember when I bought it), I would struggle to get the engine started. If a small engine isn't used regularly, it is just plain hard to start. But I've learned and verified that a little spot of some starting fluid makes it so much easier. I take off the air filter and spray it right into the carburetor it starts right up. I'm happy to do that. I was able to end up with a little less than half a yard of compost. It will grow smaller, but the raw materials are out of the way. My goal this year is to process leaves right away. Having the first batch of composting materials processed and having a method for starting the machine is a good start.

My second task has been to weed the onions and garlic. The weeds are small, but I realized that if I let them grow unchallenged, they would take over. It is a bit laborious to pull them; they are small and my fingers get very dirty. I tried the disturb them with a chop stick method. It didn't work. The roots of the weeds seemed to adapt and reattach to the soil. Pulling and casting them out of the bed is the only thing that works. (Sort of like getting rid of other problems in life if you want to use the analogy.)

It has finally become cold. Last night was the first frost we had. It was 27F when I woke up and had been down to 26F. I want to get the brassicas covered. I also covered the onions and garlic after I took this photo. I've left the strawberries uncovered for now. I want grasses to die so I can clean out the beds.



The last task was to finish the last new raised bed box. I was frustrated with the last spike in the last corner. Things weren't together like I wanted them. I finally figured out how to bend one of the side boards so that I could align it. I had to drill a new hole through the bottom board. I am now ready for top soil that I hope will come in a couple of weeks.