Back to the Garden

After so much rain, I took a few days off from gardening. Then, I went back to repair the rows. The rows in my garden are separate, with walking paths between. Some are double, but most are single. The vegetables are planted in raised rows, with what I call a moat around them. The most is used to channel the water around the outside of each row. Since I water with a hose, this method works well. When it rains really hard, the rows are all flattened out. So, I set out to repair the rows. I have a special tool for this task. It is a hoe head on an axe handle. I use it to make a shallow ditch and to scoop the dirt back up around the ditch. Once this was done, I side-dressed each row with fertilizer plus greensand then scrabbled the fertilizer into the top of the soil with a claw tool. Pictured is a repaired row with 4 tomato plants and parsley on each end, which has just sprouted. A few basil volunteers are left for good measure. Butternut squash in trying to encroach and garlic chives is blooming behind the row.