I spent Saturday and Sunday out at the two gardens I am doing with the Adickes family. One is the (primarily) potato garden at Jerid’s dad’s place, and then the big garden at the Adickes family farm. Patti and kids ended up busy with Patti’s family things that were unscheduled, but that is just how it is.
Those two pics are kind of before and after pics. First is from one side of the garden, when I had already started weeding. Second pic is all the weeding done, 10 hills of squash on the west side of the garden, and 11 hills of squash between rows of potatoes on my side of the whole potato garden. They have 6 full rows, I have 4.25 rows. Where you can see the onions on the right side of this photo, on the other end of them is a quarter row of potatoes. These, plus 120 hills at the Ness farm are what I have in, which is far more than we can use, but is kind of the point.
Potatoes are starting to bloom there. The middle of the garden is much farther ahead than the rest of the garden, apparently, because that is where the huge pile of manure sat all winter before being spread and tilled into the garden. Will be interesting to see if the plants in the middle produce better too.
At the Adickes farm, I hilled, again, all of the corn in the 3 Sisters planting. It is 5-6 inches high and I planted a couple different kinds of climbing beans inside the hills. Curious to see what works best.
Bella helped me throughout all of that part.
Just as a funny: their road was torn out a few weeks ago and has been damn near impassible much of the time. This last weekend, on Sunday, someone was discing a side of what was left of the road and I was wondering just how that made it better.
Have some smaller experimental plantings of bushing beans going in there. The one above is Yellow Indian Woman.
And another experiment.
I got in 10 different kinds of beans this weekend, but only one of my mass plantings, which was Hutterite Soup. 180 foot of row of that one. I have 4 other kids that I am going to do equivalent amounts of.
That is the plan anyway.
I got more tilled than I was capable of planting this weekend. Thought I might get to it this evening, but there were family plans I was unaware of, probably because I shaved my head and baked it in the sun all weekend.
I got in a 60 foot row of TPS seedlings. Curious to see how they do.
Also put in 20 of an F3 of a promising tomato cross.
Still so much to do. But a lot done. I figure I have until the end of the weekend of the 14th at the very latest to get things in the ground, other than plantings that have to be after the solstice.
That family thing I forgot? Nell’s graduation from the 7th grade. Next year high school. Yikes. Proud of her. She is really coming into her own.
