Garden Tilled, Go! And Preparing the Vegetable Garden Soil for Planting.

The garden has finally been rototilled by my husband, he is such a good egg. About 500 pounds (227 kg) of aged rabbit manure and 1200 pounds (544 kg) of compost were added to the 700 square foot garden to amend the soil. The city provides compost and mulch at $5 a truckload. The birds are all hopping about exploring the freshly tilled earth, the plant eating buggers. Hopefully they were not able to find any of the earthworms that came with the composted rabbit poop.

A couple of inches of mulch about 3000 pounds (1.36 metric tons) was laid over the top of the garden for weed suppression.

It took us 2 days to rototill, amend and mulch the garden soil. Now it is a race to get things planted before the rain.

Garden Tilled Go!

My husband tilled the garden and incorporated 400 pounds of composted manure into the soil. (The other soil amendments were added during the winter months.)

Now for the fun part, planting all those seedlings into the garden that were started in the dark days of winter in their little styrofoam cups. Nine okra seedlings were planted along with some okra seed to make two rows for a total of 22 plants, hopefully. That should be enough for two people to have a mess of okra everyday and share some with the neighbors. Just nine seedlings were started as a comparison to see if an early start will increase yields or if transplanting will stunt okra's growth. The oldest of the okra seedlings are just a couple of weeks old and had already started to form their second true leaves, the plants are 5 inches tall but I went ahead and buried the plants deep.

Six rows of tomato plants were planted out for a total of 48 plants. Three of the rows of tomatoes will be supported using my husband's interpretation of the Florida weave system and the rest will be staked, it's just too humid here to let the plants sprawl on the ground where the fruit are liable to rot. The tomato plants were not leggy at all so there wasn't a need to trench the plants, trenching seems to make the plants prone to listing to one side so I'd rather just bury the stems deep and mound up the soil.

My husband's only request is to grow some corn this year. Six ten-foot rows should be enough to do it and then watermelon, winter squash, and banana melon will be planted between the rows. This should help smother the weeds between the corn rows. Maybe I'll even plant some scarlet runner beans and yardlong beans to clamber up the corn.

Freshly Tilled Ground

The okra, tomato plants, and cushaw plants have been cut down and tilled under back into the garden. It was a fairly terrible year for the vegetable garden with the flood that delayed planting by 2 months and then the humid 100 degree whether that set in for 3 months with the intermittent 15 degree drops in temperature that quickly climbed back up into the 100's. The vegetables just didn't fair very well in the humidity and the swarms of cucumber and squash beetles seemed to just make them even more susceptible to disease. The tomatoes weren't as flavorful and had thick harder cores and I only had 3 zucchinis ripen and no summer squash from 7 zucchini and squash plants that were planted out. Even the okra which is usually such a winner took forever to start producing.

With this newly tilled garden plot I will plant out rows of Sugar Snap Peas which will be marked by fencing posts and to which nylon trellis netting will be attached. The peas will be planted out with 3 or 4 rows on each side of the netting. They seem to do just fine grown thickly up a trellis.

Two rows of Broad Windsor Fava Beans will be planted in the bed next to the peas. I have never had fava beans before but my husband swears they are delicious. They are supposed to be hardy to 15 degrees Fahrenheit which is well within the winter survival temperature for my area.