Another stunning, sun soaked day in the garden yesterday. Wonderful to see directly sowed spinach, kale, collards and peas growing nicely. I sense that lettuce emergence may be imminent. There are gaps in my spinach rows where I suspect the clumpy nature of the seedbed is preventing some from making it to the surface in a timely manner. My soil is on the clay side of things, so it is always a bit of a struggle to get things to a nice tilth early in the season. I'm thinking I should have sowed the spinach in a starting mix soil. Next time for sure.
But things as things are warming up, I have been spending time working the top 6 - 8 inches of the soil, adding some compost and organic fertilizer. Yesterday I spent a fair bit of time working the soil, moving from the garden fork, to the 3 pronged cultivator, and eventually the finer 5 pronged cultivator. Still a bit clumpy, but much, much, better. A bit of work with a garden rake before my next round of planting should see me putting seeds into soil of much finer tilth.
The blackberry thicket that surrounds my garden is showing real signs of life now, so before it becomes a handful I cut it back another 3 feet away from my garden beds. By July it will have reclaimed that 3 feet and will send underground tendrils to emerge randomly in my raised beds. The annoyance and work it causes me is more than made up by the berry bounty, and the fact that the blackberry blossoms attract legions of pollinating insects.
I am getting antsy to get my cabbage starts transplanted out...but it's still too early. I really need to do it by the first week of April though. Hopefully the weather gods cooperate.
Had a bit of a scare with my pepper starts...they all suddenly flopped over to lay on the soil of thier individual planting cells. Some quick googling revealed it may have been "damping off"...i.e., the soil was just too damn wet. I removed them from the wicking mat they were on, and voila! Back to attention in about 8 hours. Learning stuff like this is just bloody fascinating to me. :)
One more thing...when I first arrived back to my garden site I discovered that a huge branch had fallen from one of the big firs at the back off the garden, landing directing on the wire fencing. The fence posts back there have long since rotted away, and the only thing keeping the fence upright was the supporting nest of blackberries, salal and wild rose thickets. These were not enough to prevent the fencing from being almost flattened to the ground. Had this happened in the Summer, it would have provided a superhighway for a deer invasion and my garden would have been decimated in short order. I have propped up the fence up and pounded in some metal posts which should be enough to get through the season....but that entire back fence needs a permanent fix at some point.