April Showers Bring May Flowers...er, vegetables

I have a ton of papers to grade, but yesterday, I just couldn't bring myself to do very many of them. I went to the store twice (I forgot to get water), I did laundry, straightened the kitchen some (the whole house needs a good cleaning), and I had to go to Ken's to help around his house. Besides, it was a beautiful day. And from my home office window, I can see my garden. That half-filled raised garden bed was making me crazy. So, I gave up on the papers, went to Ken's early, and went to get more gopher dirt to top off that bed.

By the time we finished up yesterday, I was filthy dirty, but it's a good kind of dirty. A dirty that's the result of hard work. In a way, it's an earned dirty. When we finished filling up the bed, I grabbed some clean clothes and we went back to Ken's for showers and supper. It was a very good day.

In the interim somewhere I called Dad to tell him about my gardening projects. I had planned to maybe plant a few things last night when I got home. He advised against it and said I should wet the bed down good before I plant. That sounded reasonable, but I didn't want to haul out the hose and do all of that last night. And so, mother nature took care of it. It was raining when I got up this morning.

I did a little research and I've decided to do square-foot gardening in my raised garden beds. With square foot gardening, you block off square feet and plant in those squares rather than in rows. So, with a larger plant, like a tomato, you plant one plant per square, but with smaller plants, you can plant up to 16 plants per square. I've never liked rows anyway. I wasn't very good at making them straight. In a way, the weeds growing over my garden was a plus. They hid my crooked rows.