Prepping the Garden Beds

It’s time to prepare the garden beds for spring planting. We’ve poured bags of compost into the beds, turned the soil and covered it with sheets of newspaper again. It’s not pretty, all that newspaper weighted down against the wind with rocks and tree limbs, but it works. The weeds don’t get a chance to take root and the neighborhood cats won’t do their business where they can’t dig. And it’s cheap. When it’s time to transplant our seedlings I’ll peel back enough paper to plant, letting the remaining newspaper stay in place to continue keeping weeds and cats out of the bed.

The tomato seeds went into seed trays yesterday and the basil this morning. Our green bean seedlings have grown startlingly fast. It’s the first time I’ve started seeds indoors and I’m surprised at how quickly they germinated and grew. There’s a forest of green beans in my kitchen and by the time the last frost is past and the soil warm enough to plant they’ll be sturdy beanstalks.

We dug up last season’s parsley (that wouldn’t grow then, but looks healthy now) as well as a large clump of sage and moved them from wine barrels to beds. Lemon balm that wanted to escape its box is now confined to a planter on the patio.

(Here's a potato we found in a barrel when we dug out the sage.)

By the middle of next month the garden will be in full swing and my hands will be full of dirt. I can barely wait.