It's March and I'm back in the garden. After getting a snow storm that dumped 16" of snow on us literally a week and a half ago- all the snow seems like ancient history now. Thankfully the daytime temperatures have generally been ranging in the mid 40's making the garden rows workable once again.
Some of the ground is still frozen so some of the tasks around the backyard are somewhat limited, such as installing a fence around the orchard. Lately I've been bundled up and searching the yard for dead branches, clearing out brush and pulling up lots of Virginia creeper vines (which is pretty fun to do).
Several occasions through the year I've been building fires to burn up some of the yard refuse and dead wood to make ashes for the garden. My system so far entails collecting dead branches and relocating them to piles near the area I use for the fire located just south of the garden. This is something I'll do throughout the year. One pile is small twigs, and another is very large branches or logs. Its like a palette of fire building materials ready and waiting for that special day. Damp days seem to be safer days to play around with fire. What's more fun than having a warm welcoming fire on a chilly day? Therefore, I usually choose cold and dank days to build my fires... which made today perfect.
The pile started off with a lot of Virginia creeper vines, grape vines and a wide range of rotten branches. Yesterday, I collected a mass of dried weed stalks for kindling and covered it overnight to protect it from the rain we were going to get. The wind was perfect, blowing North all day and keeping the fire going well enough that I was able to add larger branches/logs. Pleasantly enough, although I was expecting to be rained on, it didn't sprinkle once the whole time I was outdoors.
Ashes always seem to pop up in my gardening books as an excellent soil amendment- especially if you have acidic soil. Wood ashes act to lime your soil (increasing the PH) as well as add potash and phosphate along with lots of trace elements (i.e. iron, boron, copper, zinc, manganese). The wider range of wood species the more variety of trace elements. Also ashes are known to be a weapon in the fight against those nasty slugs- though it hasn't worked for me yet, I'll save some just for that purpose by sprinkling it around crops that slugs find particularly tasty.
Using my trusty garden cart, which I got for Christmas, I brought buckets of compost and wood ashes to the garden. This compost is a year old and I'm adding it to as many rows as I can though I'm rationing on ones that will be planted first... such as where I planned to plant the spinach, lettuce and Cole crops. The ashes pictured above are actually from a fire I built in December when we had an unusual warm spell (an early January thaw?) that had me itching to do something outdoors. After the fire has died, I shovel the ashes into buckets and ensure I put a lid on them if I'm not using them right away as rain will leach out the good stuff.
In between feeding my ring of fire, I spent the day preparing some of the garden beds. The ground is not as a whole thawed out yet (though soon it will be), but on the contrary all of my garden rows are. Surely this is just one of the many perks to having raised beds- warmer soil. Some of todays preparations included cultivating and aerating the soil, picking out rocks, plucking out weeds (yes those really hardy/stubborn ones that overwinter), sprinkling about ashes and mixing in compost. As I was cultivating one row I dug up a carrot! Bonus! It was fresh and crisp as though winter had never occurred- this I promptly consumed. This happens sometimes if you do not manage to dig up all your carrots or potatoes and its always fun to find the surprise veggie waiting in the ground for you in the spring.
Its so nice to be outside working again. The senses are refreshed with all the natural surroundings. The smell of the soil. The kiss of the sun for five minutes (ha!). The songs of birds all about. And it's all just the beginning.
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