Spading up the First Soil

Joel started spading up garden beds for the onion plants that are expected to arrive next week. The soil is too wet to use the tiller so the shovel is the tool of the moment. We use our tiller a lot later in the season when the soil is drier and Joel runs out of time to spade everything. The soil which has been gardened for over 25 years has a nice tilth and isn't hard to spade.
Spading also is a lot better for the soil. It maintains the soil structure unlike the tiller which chops it all up and doesn't massacre the worms which the ducks are happy about.

Weeding

I actually like weeding. I like getting my hands into the soil, pulling out the weeds and looking back along the row to see the plants free of their competition. I like it a lot better than cleaning house (as anyone who has visited me will attest). But we are reasonable about weeding. These early cabbages won't need to be weeded again. They are big enough and cast enough shade to keep any new weeds at bay, unlike onions which can't compete at all and need to be kept really weed free right up until harvest. We hoe between the beds and the rows and hand weed around the plants. This evening when it finally got sort of cool we were out weeding sunflowers and beans. One of the nice things about hand work is that you can hear the birds sing.

How to Spade up a Garden Bed

Today we were visited by four students and a teacher from Summit Preparatory Charter High School in Redwood City, CA. They spent an hour with Joel learning how to properly spade up a garden bed. There is a real art to it and Joel is the best. You never see a single spot of green on any bed he has spaded. The kids were great, they did up a whole bed and learned a lot about preparing ground for a garden. We use a rototiller a lot but there are times when a shovel is really the better tool. You can prepare a bed for planting in one session as you can turn all the weeds under completely. With a tiller you have to come back a few days later to do it again. Also you can spade ground that is too wet to till and thus get into it sooner in the season. Spading also doesn't destroy the soil structure as tilling does and this benefits all the critters like earthworms that live in the soil and contribute to its fertility.

Weaving and Digging

I finished a batch of mug rugs today. These are small coasters made out of the leftover bits and pieces of Joel's handspun wool for rugs. I often have a skein or two leftover in a particular shade and rather than mix them up in a rug I make these small guys. It takes an amazingly long time to make small things. More than their equivalent in a rug. There's not only the weaving, but sewing up the ends, and then putting a label on each one. I've put 6 sets of four matching ones in my Etsy store. I'm planning on taking the rest of them to the Farmers Market his coming Saturday.

And Joel has been out spading up some of our higher, dryer garden beds to get them ready for some of the seedling about to come out of the cold frames. It is often possible to get into soil that is too wet for a tiller or a tractor with a shovel. The machines would turn it to mud but the shovel doesn't, just turns it over nicely.