I spent time cutting green thistles out of the upper two rows of my garden area. Not a hard a job just very time consuming. While doing this I started the fire and worked more on burning the crib barn. We started this process back in 2013 but didn’t get very far because Hubby began to go downhill physically back then and with his decline everything began to slow down for us when it came to getting work done. I really needed help with this job... I praise our great God that Hubby is actually able to work again, perhaps not as hard as he could but he is able to accomplish bouts of physical labor without it completely wiping him out for days. Physically his body is healing.
So after dumping my third five-gallon bucket of thistles into the fire I decided that was enough for the day and decided to get back to putting seeds in the ground. We can’t eat thistles (actually we can but they don’t go down so easily ;), so I piddled a bit here and there and decided that I needed to terminate (mow) the sour dock and a few lone wheat plants that were sticking up here and there. Unfortunately, there were a few green thistles hidden out in the area but I will have to deal with those later. Taking off the tops does not disturb the roots just makes the tops grow spines with a vengeance.
After mowing I took my small tiller and made my “drilled” rows. I finished out a beet row and then put a light layer of grass clipping spread over it. This will help hold in the moisture and slow down any weed growth since the beets should come up before the weed seed. It also marks the row. I am finding that planting into the chickweed ground cover makes it very easy to lose sight of where the row is…particularly since I am not known for making straight rows.
Well, after planting the beets, I finished out a good section of a bean row with my purple beans then woke up this morning bemoaning the decision. I only have two bags of bulk green bean seed left, Royal Purple and Cantares. The Cantares are a small bean, harder to pick and do not weigh up very well but they are really good. The royal purple are good, just not as good as a Blue Lake and they certainly do not sell as well but they do sell as a novelty. If I find there are too many I will pull them and use them to feed the compost.
Then I decided the next row needed to be the row of beans for the family. We eat Roma Beans. These are the big flat Italian beans. I can’t sell them even though they are far superior in flavor than Blue Lake and even if they are the only green beans available. They don’t look right to the local consumers. This is actually a good thing because once stuff begins to produce I have a tendency to sell everything that I can and not put enough back for us. So by planting an 80 foot row of beans just for the family that means we will get our supply of winter beans.
Surprisingly, these three rows took me longer than I think they should have but then I took breaks to feed the fire going over in the yard and eat a grapefruit. I probably should have stopped at the end of the last bean row but I decided to push on. I had 4 cayenne peppers I wanted to get planted and 12 tomato plants. I got the 4 peppers in and 8 of the tomatoes and decided it was time to stop. It was almost 7pm and by the time I watered the flowers, rhubarb plants, and etc. it was even later and I felt like I had over done for the day. This having to work within the parameters of an illness makes life interesting. It is different than working hard and being tired from it.