PREPARING THE VEGGIE GARDEN ... AND A FEW UPGRADES

With the snow no longer blanketing the ground, it's amazing how a couple of sunny days can motivate one to get outside and start digging in the dirt. Preparing the beds for planting the new seedlings is always fun because you know summer is just around the corner.

Having taken care of some of the beds following the 2019 growing season should make it a lot easier to groom the beds.

Why don't we take a little walk around the vegetable gardens to see what we will need to address before planting?
In this picture, you can see the potato bed just to the right of where the hops have been covered with hay.

As you can see from the date and time stamp on this photo, we did not do much with the hop beds until late April.
With many of the rhizomes already producing vines that were a foot long, it was somewhat difficult to place hay over the beds.
This year we weeded the hop beds and covered them with hay before any new growth appeared. This made the job of bedding down the hops much easier.

In this pic, you can see the structure that I fabricated to support the hop vines.

In a couple of months, it will be covered with hop vines, forming a beautiful canopy.

By the end of August, the vines will be loaded with hops.

Picking the hops is always a good time!

Making homebrew is even more fun!

Next up are the apple trees. They were planted three years ago. They produce five different types of apples. These trees have been grafted with the branches from,

This year I hope apple trees do a little better than last year. Last year the deer ate the tips of all of the branches where the new growth was forming.

The garlic bed planted last October is looking good, and the chives are already producing that scrumptious green stalk. Not much to do here. 😊

These were the new beds I made last year, and only require some tilling of the soil. These beds were planted with cauliflower, tomatoes, peppers, and cabbage.

The middle row in this picture needs a lot of hobbitizing. Once I retired, I no longer work, but rather do whatever I feel like doing at the time. Everything is a hobby and that is where the word hobbitizing comes from. Yes, add this word to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
This bed is where we planted the peas. Although they grew great last year, the rabbits were able to invade this row of peas, and munched on the vine down low, killing the entire plant. 😂

About 80% of this bed is the home to the new hop rhizomes which were planted last year. The remainder of the bed is for cucumbers and squash.

These are the new rhizomes that were planted last year in an effort to establish the opposite side of the canopy which had died from a lack of care.

These old Christmas door mates make it easy on the knees when kneeling!

The potato bed will need some work.

Besides tilling this bed, not much else will be necessary as this bed produced potatoes like crazy.

103 pounds to be exact. 😊

Every time we unearthed another cluster, we were bowled over.

We planted butternut and spaghetti squash in this section of the garden.

This area was planted with pole beans. We plan on adding a new section for this prolific plant.

The next couple of pictures are of the main garden which was planted with two boxes of carrots, two boxes of beets, my favorite, and two boxes for tomatoes.

This last picture is of a small section of our Walnut Trees. Much care goes into our plantations of different trees.

Our bounty of walnuts was invaded by the squirrels, but we did end up with a small harvest.

We have got some hobbitizing in front of us, and if the weather holds we'll be in good shape come planting time.