Ten Things Tuesday: Garden Manifesto

My garden calls to me.

During the time BEFORE I can safely plant without dooming plants to die of frost, I am making plans to eliminate some of the things that caused setbacks last year. which really prevented the kinds of success we were hoping for.

1. Hardwood sawdust and chipped nasty invasive autumn olive trees are going down in my garden paths to encourage me to not run the other bloody way when faced with the grass and weeds that come uninvited in to my vegetable patches. Bob will get to use one of his toys - the chipper el supremo - and I’ll get all sorts of workouts taking down the damn trees. I have a pole saw, hear me roar.

2. Spraying regularly to discourage the hoofed varmints from dining on my greens. We used a nasty concoction of putrefied eggs, garlic and cayenne pepper that really worked. Downside? Taking overly deep breaths in its vicinity.

3. Half-inch conduit piping. One of my dear husband’s ideas, these very reasonably-priced pipes, when driven about 2 feet into the ground, are remarkably sturdy and make attractive (well, if you like gray steel) trellis, arbors and bean poles. We’ve used them for a year or two as bean poles and they rock, so we’re expanding. Stay tuned for photos.

4. The conduit will provide the right home for my soon-to-be grape vines; Bob and I are about to invest in 3 different varieties of grapes and we’ll be planting 16 plants in all along our forty-foot pergola/trellis we’re putting up this weekend. We WON’T be planting Concord grapes because it gives Bob a case of the vicious ooks, probably from a traumatic Manischevitz-related Passover incident in his childhood.

5. My bed of red sunflowers, easily my favorite, will be (hopefully) welcoming 4 other varieties this summer. They are:

6. I welcome asparagus to my garden this year. We won’t be able to harvest for 3 seasons until it establishes itself, but I as I love this pee-transforming vegetable, I can’t wait until they arrive in the mail from Seeds of Change (where the sunflowers are from, as well).

7. Years ago, I planted some heliopsis - perennial sunflowers - which are spreading and coming up all over my beds; therefore, I am ripping them out and finding new homes for them. They grow to about 4 feet and are lovely, but they are energetic spreaders and I my front is replete with hundreds of shoots. Yep, work’s cut out for me this weekend!

8. Our new tractor arrives this Friday. John Deere took back our previous “entry-level”  yard machine, because it was a poor model they now even longer produce due to a plethora of problems, so they’ve earned our customer loyalty. Mowing - with earphones and goggles - is meditative to me, so I am excited to get myself onto that green and yellow monster and shut out the world.

9. Poison Ivy plagued us perniciously last year in a new corn bed we’d tilled in. DId I know that tilling and therefore disturbing unused ground practically scrteams for poison ivy?  Noooo.   In an attempt to smother that noxious weed, we’ve put down black plastic and weighed it down with leftover mulch hay. If poison ivy show up anywhere else, and it will - dammit - we’ll pull it all - leaves to roots, and bring it to the town dump.

10. In the next 3-4 weeks until we can safely plant most of my impatient (ok, so I’m projecting) seeds, I will attempt patience, cut down as many invasive trees as possible, and take photos of all the lovely things blooming around me.

Are YOU gardening this year?