A Muscle Moving Day

Lawdy, did I work hard yesterday.  Lawdy, did I sleep hard last night.  But as you all know, it was a deserved, good sleep, and I'd probably still be sawin' 'em off it my bladder hadn't insisted I get up at six bells.

I got my loverly cauliflower baby seedlings (teen-aged they were, really) planted in their raised bed and covered with the cold frame for the night.  They suffered a smidge from transplant shock, but already this morning they look much better than they did last night.

This is a new (to me) cauliflower I'm trying this year.  An old heirloom from Sustainable Seed Company which supposedly has "self-wrapping leaves which shield the snow-white heads from the sun."  This eliminates the need to tie the leaves up over the heads as they mature.  The name?  Self-Blanching Cauliflower.  How's that for originality?

I edged the asparagus/Everbearing strawberry patch (all the time muttering bad words about the dang quack grass which never gives up trying to sneak into the garden soil), and then cross-creeping along on hands and knees, I weeded the asparagus and strawberries, then mulched the asparagus with straw.

After getting the asparagus mulched, the last wheelbarrow was still nearly full so I used that to mulch the raised bed containing our rhubarb and comfrey.

Helped (grunt-groan, puff-puff) Papa Pea move our two ancient, but still usable, snowmobiles from one storage spot to another.  (This would have been oh-so-much easier if it had been done when snow was on the ground and they could have been started and driven to their new home.  But I'm not pointing fingers.  There are multitudinous tasks I never get done in a timely manner.  'Magine that.)

More eradicating encroaching quack grass around the whole perimeter of the field garden.  Took a wander over to the shell peas and potatoes, both planted last week on the 10th, but nothing showing there yet.  I did notice in my meanderings of the day that the raised bed of yellow storage onions I planted on the 6th are just starting to poke through.  I plant two 4' x 8' beds of yellow and one of red onions each year.  Usually I don't plant any of them this early, but decided to give one bed a try since onions are a bit frost hardy . . . should they have to be.

I replanted two varieties of lettuce in the bed I put in on the sixth.  Most varieties (I always do a mixture of red and green lettuces) are sprouted and doing very well, but one of the varieties (I replanted) had sprouted very sparsely and the other was a complete no-show.

I'll end with this picture.  On Monday, Papa Pea replaced these two raised bed frames with new ones he constructed.  Looks as though we got our money's worth out of these, doesn't it?  I'm thinking they were at least twenty years old.