My body is not thrilled with me, but I seem to have lived through the weekend.
Saturday I awoke at 4 am to rain. There are quite a few potatoes to get planted so I worked my way through the Carola potato sets, cutting up the larger ones and picking out the smaller ones which can be planted whole. It is never a good idea to plant cut potatoes in really wet ground but whole ones can. Freshly cut ones can rot if the ground is too soggy, but the cut sides scab over in a few days so those will be ready for later this week.
The rain stopped by 730 here and the whole potatoes, a flat of cabbage, along with onion sets and garlic bulbils myself and tools headed down to the Minnetonka garden. There I worked the tilled soil into a couple of long beds, planted the flat of cabbage surrounded by garlic and onion sets, and planted all of the whole potatoes. I restrung the old trellis the runs the length of the back of the garden with a metal wire on top and bottom, and set up the middle section for peas, and an end section for pole beans, but then was out of twine. The twine comes in about 1500 foot rolls. Guess I will be going through more than one of those this year. I still have a lot more trellises to make. It was 130 pm then and my body was done with me. There was not enough left in me, after working with that much wet soil, to head to the Ness farm gardens. The wet soil had me covered with mud, my hands hurt and my back was unhappy with me to say the least. It spasmed up on me driving home.
A muscle relaxant and a beer got the worst of the spasm calmed down. I did not drive down to my parents and the Red Wing gardens that night as I had planned. Instead I got the Explorer packed and ready to go for the next morning. It was going to be a later start working in the gardens down there, but there was no way I was going to drive until the meds had worn off.
We actually were on our way to Red Wing by 9 am, which is pretty good for our family. I was in the gardens there by 1030 and worked until 1 pm, took 30 minutes for a sandwich, then worked until 5, took an hour for Easter dinner (and a shower beforehand, and clean clothes) then I changed back into the gardening clothes and worked until dark. Tally for the day: 3 more apple trees planted, just under 400 feet of raised beds made, 22 broccoli plants (under plastic cups, they were not hardened off yet) a couple hundred more onion and garlic sets, and a 600 plant grow-out of Mandan White Flint Corn. I started on a much larger area I will grow another kind of corn in, but only had time to make 2 eighty foot long beds and start a third before it was getting dark.
The corn I did plant I did in “hills” on top of the raised bed. The seeds are double planted in a 5 pointed hill, and I watered the seeds into place. As the plants grow I will pull the dirt from between the hills into the hill creating what will eventually look like a corn bush. There is enough room between hills and rows to allow enough sunlight in for squash vines as well, but they will not be planted until the nights are consistently about 10 degrees warmer than they are.
The long trip home ended at about 1030 pm. Girls barely woke up getting them from the car to bed. I took another muscle relaxant, had a Woodchuck Apple Cider, and went to sleep. Going to be a busy week again here, always more to do, but I am happy with how much I got done this weekend.
Roger just called. He may be delivering my new bees later this week. He was on a veranda sipping coffee watching the ocean lap the shore somewhere down south (probably Florida) and wanted to know if the ice was off the lakes and the frost out of the ground. I assured him it was, so he told me to get the insurance back on his bee truck and he would come home.
