Straight and narrow
The garden’s new shape is certainly coming along. Those 6 hours of work I got done on Mother’s Day has really made a difference!
Before:
After:
I only had enough mulch for a few pathways (free mulch is hard to come by), so I elected to only do the pathways along the beds that still needed work. After all, the other beds have already been planted and I shouldn’t need to touch them again until it’s time to weed.
They may not look like much, but those pathways are about 6″ deep, so each barrowload only covered about 3′. Loooots of trips through the muck. They will eventually decompose down to nothing, but in the mean time they do a fairly good job of keeping my knees and the wheelbarrow out of the muck. They also ought to help proliferate microflora and act as a moisture reservoir during the summer months when the water table drops. (That is the one very nice thing about planting down in the bottoms – I may have to wait an extra 2 months to get plants in, but I never have to water even the thirstiest, even during the hottest summers.)
I also had just enough compost left to fill in a row and a half between my new pathways. It is 6-8″ deep at some points, 1″ in others, depending on the terrain under it. I wanted to even out the soil level.
See the plank walkway I had to set up in order to be able to use the wheelbarrow?
I got my last 4 tomatoes planted, along with 12 cucumbers (see the wire trellis?), 12 dill, 6 tomatillos, and about 30 zinnias. I left half a bed empty to plant my first batch of corn.
The garden’s starting to look good!