Busy Weekend of Planting

All those plants I bought a few days ago needed to go into the ground. I spent several hours on both Saturday and Sunday planting them. I also double-dug a new bed for some seedlings I had started in the house.

Double-digging is hard work, but it is great for the plants. It loosens the soil up ~18 inches down. The basic sequence is to dig a trench, and then put that dirt into the wheelbarrow. Then make that same trench twice as deep, and replace the soil. Then dig another trench next to it and put the dirt into first one. It should mound up above the level of the ground since it has more air. Think of it as fluffing the dirt 12-18 inches down. I like to take logs from the rotting wood pile to serve as a border. It keeps the dirt from washing away.

This bed is for “cattle beans” a type of bush bean, and some purple string beans. I’m going to try to train the purple beans to crawl up the fence.

This is one of the newly planted hardy kiwis. Once they get bigger, I will also train them to climb the fence.

This is the newly created strawberry patch in my front yard with five different varieties. I bought a couple more at the farmers market. I couldn’t resist.

Finally, the three blueberries and rhubarb. I ran out of mulch, so I’ll need to get some more. You can see the apple tree we planted last month in the background.

Digging is great exercise. I can’t wait to taste all the goodies these plants will produce!