Time to Plant the Garden

Well here it is towards the end of  May.
We started thinking garden at the Old Farmer's House at the first of the month.

And we had weather cold enough to snow in Western NY.
This is why safe planting time there was mid May.

"If you plant peas on St. Patrick's Day, 
and then it snows on them; you will have a bumper crop."
Perhaps the peas and onion sets are in early, they will survive. 

Soon the carrots, beets, swiss chard, kohlrabi etc will be planted

We would eagerly go out each morning to see if any had sprouted.

Then the squashes, tomatoes,
 and the corn at the north end of the garden. 

After the tomatoes are planted we would go out the next

morning and see how they were doing.
The Old Farmer would point out where one
was chopped down like a little tree
The damage was from the "cut worm".
It would eat through the stem just above the ground level.
You would loose a few each year and if you had extra
plants you could fill in. This only happened the first few
days before they "hardened" up.

The Old Farmer had nice straight rows in his garden. 

It was a big garden, he kept a line rolled up on two sticks in the barn.

Each spring it came out and started the first row, the line must have been

100 feet long! Then each row after he moved the line over 2 feet, more
or less depending on what was being planted. 

After the line was set he would go down along it with the hoe
and make the furrow in which to plant the seeds.  

I will never forget The Old Farmer taking me out to the new garden

after a heavy shower. It had been very dry.
He said that he supposed I thought we had a good rain now
and the garden was well watered. I agreed. 

The he bent over and flicked over a bit of dirt with his finger.

Only the thinnest bit on top was set, underneath was still dry dusty soil.  

Spring Is Just Around The Corner

Well, maybe spring is here and after last weeks post

about planting by the signs it seems a good time to

segue into how The Old Farmer planted his garden.

The old garden had been plowed under in the fall.

So come the spring it is plowed again to loosen up the soil,

disced the break it up and dragged to get out grass.

You had to wait until it wasn't too wet for these processes

or the soil would just clump and get hard.
You would take a handful of soil and squeeze it, if too wet
it formed a tight clump. if just right it was damp but broke up.
Dragging to get out the grass would help minimize how much would grow

competing with your garden (and having to hoe hoe hoe)

 The garden was laid out in neat rows using a long line.
The Old Farmer would hoe a trench along the line,
We would follow setting the seeds or plants
and he would follow and fill it back in.

He starting the rows with the shortest plants and going

to the tallest, which would be at the north end of the garden.
This was the corn so it would not shade whatever was next to it
and so on.

I think this fellow played in the plantain too long. He is all tuckered out!