Pushing the Limits...Not So Fast

March 2nd was overcast and kind of chilly out. The high for the day was only in the upper 40's. It certainly wasn't as nice as the last week of February when the temperatures were in the upper 60's. The forecast tipped our hand though with the next 10 days having chances of rain on all of them. So we decided to use that opportunity to start our garden for the year. My thought was that it was a bit early but worth a chance and the cost of seeds was largely insignificant compared to the labor which is essentially free these days as we had nothing better to do.

So I got the tiller fired up, a job in itself for the first time since we have owned it, and was able to till the entire garden. It worked up so nicely, by far the nicest looking soil since we started this process a few years ago. The heavy mulching is starting to build up the organic matter so it is no longer chunks of clay and now feels quite loamy to the touch. I went ahead and worked the entire garden at least down to the final pass you can see between the raised strawberry beds on the near end where I planted my garlic last fall. 

We started on the far end of this photo and planted some peas, radishes, lettuce, onions, potatoes and carrots. Unlike last year, I put our electric fence up immediately to keep the deer out from now on. Although I ran out of steam and didn't get it hooked up to electricity, I will do that in the next coming days before anything starts sprouting. Last year when it was solar and not working the greatest, the rabbits ate our early vegetables down to the ground not once but three times before I upgraded to a more robust electric fencer plugged into the electrical grid. That did the trick.

By the time I hit my easy chair in the evening, my body let me know a good day's work had occurred and I was pleased. At that time, I had thought we had pushed the limits of gardening in this part of the world by a full week at least if not more. But then as I scrolled through the "Memories" notification on my Book of Face, I noticed that two years ago, the first time we planted the above garden, we had started planting on the very same day. Maybe I should have planted during the very warm final week of February after all.

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