Reworking the Garden, Day Three

After a break for geocaching, we got back to work on the garden. Jeffrey and I raked pinestraw out of the entire thing to be put on the burn pile. It's true that pine straw will compost and a LOT of it gets put in the bin. However, pine straw has a tough outer "shell" that causes it to break down more slowly. Also, it is an "acid" and can get your pH all wonky if you have too much in your garden. Tomatoes love it...sweet peas, not so much. So I have to be careful with it. Mountain mint loves pine straw, too. Although, actually, mountain mint would probably love the cold, hard floor of a troll dungeon. This stuff grows ANYWHERE. (And is lovely with its purple stems and leaf-undersides. I like to pull it up just to sniff it for a little pick me up--it's powerful stuff.)

After removing my herb garden to Jeffrey's wagon and one of the wheel barrows

(and finding and taking a ridiculously long time getting a good shot of some volunteer leaf lettuces)

we set about tilling. (And by "we," I mean Will.) We're tilling the garden despite using raised beds for a few reasons. First, it will smooth out the lumps caused by my raised herb patch and lettuce bed. Second, it will give us a clean slate to work with and plan for. Third, it will break up the topsoil to make placing our frames easier AND to allow us to scoop dirt from the paths between the frames to place in the frames. Yay, tilling! Hey, know what gets caught in tillers besides pine straw? Rocks.

Boo, rocks!

In any case, by the end of day three, we had tilled most of the garden and Will had built three more frames. We were almost ready to start filling and planting! Woohoo!

In celebration, I tried to get arty with the catnip and lavendar in the wheel barrow. Our cat loves catnip and I was tickled to realize as I dug up the billions of volunteers that it really does smell like CK1. Also, it's hard to be arty with it. Which didn't tickle me that much, really. Note the everpresent pine straw.