I am a Sunday gardener

My favorite garden companion, Kitty. My second favorite
garden tool, a mattock.

I am a Sunday gardener. Because of my work schedule, I do very little in the garden on weekdays. Caring for the critters bookends my everyday, with milking and feeding every morning and evening. Sunday is the day that I water and mulch and weed and plant. I do find some time to do some harvesting in the garden in the evenings. Fresh vegis and goat cheese make an incredible dinner.

Sunday is a good day to spend focusing on the divine aspects of this world, too. And what better place to do that than in the garden. I noticed this afternoon that my brain plays songs like "Angel Band" and "I went down to the river to pray" and "Dancing on the Sacred Path" as I dig and pull and make order among the weeds.

Three sisters - corn, beans, pumpkins

Today,with Kitty's help, I made and planted a Three Sisters garden. Corn and pole beans and pumpkins are supposed to grow well together, support each other and it is an interesting story. We'll see how it works out. I planted three rows,about 20 feet each. It's a little late, but I'm a Sunday gardener.

One of the messages for the day seemed to be that we didn't need to be using power equipment. I got my tiller fixed earlier this year, with Josh's help, and Shawn fixed my mower for me for my birthday. It really was what I wanted. So, this morning Lena was out cutting hay in the front yard/pasture and I was running the tiller in the Three Sisters garden when the tiller threw a belt and the mower threw a rod.

After running into our little town and discovering that several people could order the belt for me, I decided to come back home and dig the garden by hand. With our turf, that takes a mattock, (my second favorite gardening tool after a dibbler.)

Had the Three Sister's garden planted
but not quite mulched when the rain came.

I staked out the rows and chopped sod, throwing the root clods on the hugelkultur pile (yep, it's still a work in process). Then I smoothed the dirt, used the dibbler to poke my holes at precise depth and distance and planted the corn, pole beans and pumpkins using the mantra "One for the coon, one for the crow, one for the worms and one to grow." I may have planted a little too light...

It was clouding up as I started mulching the rows with fresh straw. I had just put down about half a bale when the sky opened up and blessed my little Three Sisters garden with a wonderful soaking rain.

I love being a Sunday gardener.

My Three Sisters garden was blessed by a
beautiful afternoon rain.

Slips and Starts

The sweet potato project is well underway. This winter, my gardening has been indoors. I have the laundry room window full of hopes in the form of sticks in moist dirt. I hope they'll be elderberries and peaches and figs in the future. My kitchen window is blooming with sweet potato slips and Shawn's shop is full of sleeping front porch plants.

The two sweet potatoes creating the slips are ones saved from last year's crop, which was grown from slips given to me by Cynthia. I hope to grow a big crop this year, using strawbale culture for these plants, but it looks like I might have extra, if you need some, I'd be glad to pass along this gift.

Building Community - Arkansas Master Naturalists

We've had a great group volunteering their time in our gardens at the Ozark Folk Center this year. The Arkansas Master Naturalists have been digging weeds, planting beds, mulching gardens and working with Tina Marie Wilcox to get some great things going.

This incredible group does great things all over the state. If you're looking for a way to spend time with some great people, get a little exercise, work in the sun and help out your community - check out this organization.

And don't forget to go back to yesterday's blog post and enter to win a free pair of boots from Country Outfitter. They have great boots for working in the garden, or building trails at Arkansas State Parks.

My September garden

Tomato, basil and night blooming jasmine cuttings rooting on the
kitchen window sill. The blue bottle just makes me happy,
I've always thought cobalt blue glass was one of the prettiest things
in the whole world.

With temperatures consistently hitting 100 and no rain to speak of, I've moved what I can of my garden In to my kitchen. I'm still watering the blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, jerusalem artichokes and fig... and I hope they make it. This morning, in the light of the full moon, I planted Black Prince tomato cuttings that I'd rooted and both sweet and Thai basil. I also have more cuttings started. I'll be traveling a lot in August, so this will make it easier to take care of things when I'm home and less to leave with Shawn and Lena.In September, I plan to plant chard, like I did last year, kale and other winter greens, as well as my rooted cuttings. Maybe some beets and... it'll be like having a second spring, I hope. I'll let you know how it goes.

These Black Prince tomato cuttings are rooted and now
planted so that I can feed them.

Peas on St. Patty's Day

Back in my oldest memories is the line "Plant peas on St. Patty's day." I'm not Irish, my background is German and English, so it makes perfect sense to me to celebrate a holiday by planting a food that will be a spring staple from the garden.

Everything grows well in Arkansas, but having to weed the
blueberries on March 18 seems a bit extreme.

This summer I seem to be playing with garden forms. I'm still building the hugelkulture pile with logs from Foxbriar, punky unusable sticks from broom stick hunting, trimmings from trees, soil from drainage trenches we are digging and compost from the kitchen. I'm making a keyhole garden outside the backdoor where I can dump most of my compostables. And I decided to try planting potato cages. I have no idea whether or not these will work, so don't follow the process, unless you want to experiment on your own. I will take pictures and keep following their progress here this summer.

All the blueberries are now weeded and re-mulched.

I'm still a Sunday gardener, so I can't get more done than I can create in a Sunday afternoon, but it sure feels good to play in the dirt. I do have time to weed, water and work with things when I go out and harvest for dinner each night.

Gardening is good!

It was a rock cage, now it is a potato cage.
 It's about 4-ft. in diameter.

Set where the old mulch pile was and then lined with belly
fleece, to keep the dirt in and the bugs out. Filled with
about 6 inches of dirt from the drainage ditches I am
trying to create.

Yukon Gold seed potatoes from North Arkansas Farm Supply.
I cut them so that there was one active eye per chunk.
This is three pounds.

Cut potatoes and scattered on top of dirt.

Another six inches of dirt on top of the potatoes. As they
continue to grow, we'll add another six inches of dirt
and then another six inches. I've heard that you can add
up to 18 more inches of dirt to encourage more potatoes.
We'll see if it works.

Then I planted sugar snap peas, also from Co-op,
all around the outside of the potato cage.
 I planted them one inch apart and covered
them over about one inch with ver.y wet ditch dirt

The rainbow chard bed kept us in greens all winter.
 Looks like dinner tonight.