Expansion underway

After a short, warm winter, followed by a very warm, early spring, I already feel behind with garden work in early April. The ground was ready to plant with cool season crops like peas, radishes, beets, etc, by early March. I have to remind myself that in a normal year I would actually be right about on time. The cooler weather lately has been a good change from the unusually warm days and nights that had the season in fast forward. It now feels like everything can slow down and become more on pace with a normal spring.

This week we're well on our way to getting the Community Garden ready. Applications for membership were due last Monday and everyone who is receiving a plot will be notified this Monday. Once again we had more demand than I anticipated, which makes the the garden expansion even more necessary. Ann Brau, who runs Compass Plant CSA, came with her tractor and rotovator on
Thursday and this morning to till a section north of the existing garden and an area north of the shed for a new rain garden we will be planting in May as part of a workshop. The garden will receive overflow from the rain barrels that are placed on the north side of the shed. The tilling was largely successful and uneventful, except for a couple unseen metal fence footings that were churned up by the rotovator. During the approval process for the expansion, City staff had confirmed that there were no buried wires or pipes that we needed to avoid. But, no one knew about these old, forgotten fence footings (according to a neighbor, the area of Miller Park where the Community Garden is located used to be a sheep pasture before it was sold to the City). After hitting two footings in what was clearly the line of an old fence, Ann avoided the rest by tilling farther away from the shed and I laid down newspaper and cardboard to kill the grass where she couldn't till. The next steps will be to lay out pathways and beds, delegate beds to new members, and start planting.

After the expansion was tilled, I took a walk around the garden to see how much more weeding needed to be done. It is interesting to see what comes back each year after winter that you don't anticipate. I expect to see the perennials in the herb bed like oregano, sorrel, and chives come back and the garlic to sprout through the straw mulch (although not nearly as early as it did) but I have been surprised by some 'volunteers' that are making an appearance,
including clusters of tomato seedlings in one bed (looking like they sprouted in March), well developed lettuce and thousands of fennel seedlings in another bed, and several forgotten onions in a third bed. Of course, there are the weeds too. Lots of curly dock (from a contaminated load of compost), lamb's quarter, creeping charlie, crabgrass, and others. This time of year, though, I don't mind weeding as much. They are patchy and the new roots of the weeds come out easily.