A Gardner's Work Is Never Done

Jeff's been busy changing the garden to a series of 4'x4' raised beds made from the pallets he's been collecting.  

He's leaving wide paths between the boxes that we'll eventually line with wood chips... but so far this season he's tilling the paths... to control the weeds.  The boxes are set on tilled ground and the anchor/legs hammered down. Then he mixes composted grass and vegetable scraps from our compost bin with composted horse manure (from our former vet, Gary, who lives about a mile down the road from us that Jeff's getting in trade for helping repair Gary's washed out driveway) and composted cow manure (bought from an ol'Cornhill friend of his brother's on South Side Rd in Frankfort) with the soil dug from another area of the garden and fills the boxes. He then fills the hole he's created with the mixture.  This fall Jeff wants to add vermiculite to the boxes to aid drain but they seem to be draining quite well without it.  He's been using the same mixture to hill the potatoes in the vertical cages and the potato plants are to the top of the cages and have started to flower.

(Remember, flowers on the plants are promises of potatoes underground!)  Yesterday we stopped at Massaro's and got some tomato plants (with tomatoes!) and Italian long hot peppers to add to the plants Jeff's grown from seeds.  He's got lettuces and spinach in one box, herbs in another, the dreaded beets and parsnips in another and bush beans and squash in others.  The bean tower has vine all the way to the top and the squash and eggplant around it's base have started to flower.  We're waiting for the hummingbird/butterfly flower mix to start flowering around the apple tree but that won't be for another couple of weeks (good thing they're perennials) so we got some petunias at Massaro's, too.  He's also got a HUGE crop of mosquitoes that have driven me inside.  He sprayed again last night and if it doesn't rain for a day or 2 that might help. 

OTN:  The blue size 2 boy's cardigan with colorful train buttons and a watch cap that is a special order is about half finished.  I took time from that to do a size 6 mo 'pretty in pink' set that I sent to the shop Thursday and then did another one to put in my stock bag. Today I'm doing baseball hats coz they sell as quick as I can do them and I'm all out in the shop.  Sunday evening The Grateful Dead is in concert at Doubleday Field.  Don't know if the 'Dead Heads' will shop but we're planning on being open late. (Or is that insurance that they won't trash?)

Flood update:  FEMA has designated the Mohawk Valley as a commercial disaster area due to the recent flooding but hasn't decided about the residential areas.  I heard yesterday that at least a dozen houses... in Herkimer alone... have been
condemned due to flood damage.  Some people are also concerned that the undermined roads will develop sinkholes.