A Little Soil Prep

I took advantage of the 55 degrees and sunny weather to do a little soil preparation.

Late this fall, I adopted the neighboring garden plot. The gardeners hadn't been able to come by and it was untended. So I watered and weeded and last week pulled up the frozen tomato plants. Today, I turned over the soil. Like my plot, they have six inches of top soil on top of hard-packed gravel. I didn't bother digging through the gravel though. I've done that in parts of my garden and it's a huge job.

In my garden, I pulled up the (beautiful) swiss chard to make way for garlic. It's supposed to rain tomorrow so it would be ideal to get the garlic in this evening. I made a 3'6" by 3' bed. Depending on how densely we plant the garlic, it can hold from 56-192 heads. I don't think I'll be able to eat 192 heads of garlic, so it may be wise to space them out a bit!

I also planted some Allium flowers around the chives. I hope the Allium gigantum bulb I planted survives. It will be a fun flower.

Garlic bed in the far corner. To the left you can see the freshly tilled neighboring plot.

Colorful kale, mums, and dianthus. I expected the mums to bloom more than they did. They have lots of blossoms, but few flowers.

Note the long shadows. I took this picture at almost exactly noon today.