Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Almost Wordless Wednesday

Couple of updates for now:



Check out that garden! Week 2 is coming together. The muscadine vines are all pruned back there, ready for another great season of growth. This will be year 4 for the vines, so they should all produce a good solid crop. The first raised bed closest to the vines the kids and I put together on Sunday. We pulled the 2x8 frame from the bed in front of the front door and cut it up to make the far side of the new frames. Then we added some new 2x6 lumber to finish the rest of the raised part. Since the yard slopes away from the house I wanted the taller boards at the far side of the bed to try and level it out, and that's exactly what we were able to do for the first one. I even got to turn the soil over once, so that was really cool. Digging in the dirt in January, it's a good thing. Next weekend we'll get the second bed finished and maybe start adding some compost to the beds.

This time of year there are some good tasks to do in the garden. Soil prep tops the list in my book. If you can give the garden anywhere from 6 weeks to 4 months for the soil supplements to get worked and settled into the soil then it will be ready to start growing plants come planting time. Planting time for us in NC is around April 20 this year. Adding compost and manure now will reap the rewards then. Same thing goes with lime over the grass in your yard. It takes about 6 weeks for lime to affect the soil PH. Lime the yard now means it will be ready for overseeding in late March.

I don't like to throw the term big-ass salad around lightly. But there's a pint glass in there for reference. That thing was huge! Mash up a whole avocado with some lemon juice and soy sauce, and we used that as a salad dressing (Kelley's salad was just as big as mine). There's spinach and romaine in there, and plenty of toppings. It's totally Paradigm and vegan, no cheese or anything unhealthy. It was huge and I ate it all and felt amazing afterwards. This was lunch on Monday.

2 comments:

Lisa from Lisa's Yarns said...

Yum, that salad looks great. I love big salads with lots of different toppings! One of my favorite toppings is edamame.

It's funny to read about you prepping your garden for planting season because I grew up in the midwest where the planting season was so much later since we could have snow into the month of April! I remember my grandpa would feel lucky if he could get his potatoes planted by Mother's Day! We had a huge garden when I was growing up and I really miss having access to fresh produce like that. I tried doing a patio garden but was pretty disappointed with it... but maybe someday I will have a yard and can have a garden.

CautiouslyAudacious said...

Ok now I'm craving a salad for lunch but that's not what I brought!! :-)