beautiful day in the garden 2/8/2008

what a wonderful day to work in the garden!  warm, just enough sun and a slight breeze to make it the perfect weather for gardening.  this warm weather has been just enough to wake up all of the weeds and to encourage trees and bulbs to sprout as well.  today we decided to work on a few things that have needed attention.

first on the list for me today was to clean up the lasagna bed and add a few new layers to it.  there were many weeds sprouting, mainly henbit and chickweed with a few wild onions for variety.  after removing all of them, i raked up some leaves and spread them over the bed.

next, darry used the wheel barrow and made 4 trips down the hill for some compost.  we discovered that we actually have a huge pile of compost aging in the meadow down hill from the garden.  since darry was willing, i took advantage of his muscles and had him bring up 4 loads to top off the lasagna bed.  then i went over by the grass garden and raked up some pine needles to top off the walkways in the lasagna bed.  after crawling around on my hands and knees and removing many buckets of weeds around the lasagna bed, darry made at least 6 trips back down the hill to bring up mulch for the walkways.   

 

today, i wasn't the only one with an agenda.  darry decided to clean out the compost corral and the small composters located in the garden.  he climbed in and removed trash, a hose and some metal reinforcement wiring-looks like it would make a great trellis so we saved it.  then he began the monstrous task of turning the compost to aerate it.

looks like some people do not understand what a compost pile is.  most of this stuff is plastic and as you know, it will not breakdown in our lifetime!  we gathered it up and put it in the trash  bin where it belongs.

this small digester, located near the lasagna bed, was jammed full of stuff from last fall.  it had never even broken down due to a lack of moisture.  darry removed it all and placed it in the compost corral.  we will have to make an effort to get moisture into it to help it break down.

here is darry down in the meadow in the compost pile.  right next to this massive pile of compost is a huge pile of wood chips that came from some trees that were removed last summer.

a close up of the weeds in the walkways.  mostly henbit and chickweed, they need to be removed so we can cover the walkways with mulch.