Breaking Ground
Several weeks ago, we finally broke ground on our growing space! A bit surreal that it is finally time, but with the help of some friends, we were able to borrow a tiller for the back of our tractor and my husband was able to quickly and fairly easily get our space tilled. I know that there are good reasons to not till, and we may pursue that method later, but we chose to till this first year. I’m glad we did. It was good to get the grass removed and we found lots and lots of large rocks, so I’m sure it will be a benefit to our plantings to get those out of the way. Now, did we also churn up lots and lots of weed seeds that will now germinate and need to be delt with later? Probably, but we are planning to use weed barrier to try to kill as many of those as possible.
Tilled grow space
We had our compost delivered and I am really pleased with the supplier we used. I never thought I would refer to compost as beautiful, but it really is a nice rich dark color and well screened. Fortunately, we were able to take advantage of a couple of unseasonably warm days and we got the compost tilled into the soil. My son was on spreader patrol and was able to get the lime spread so that it could be tilled in at the same time. We definitely need the lime to increase the pH of the soil. We also know that this should have been added in the fall, but our agronomist has seen success with tilling the lime into the soil in the spring. Hopefully it works and we are creating a good foundation for our blooms. All we need, now that we are past our last frost date, is for the soil temp to get consistently above 50-55 degrees then it will be grow time!
