Tilled

I know this is boring to some people but the section of yard I wanted tilled was done today. First time in my life that I've had land I lived on tilled. 

Daughter and I slept really late this morning, woke to the man calling who was coming over with the tractor. I woke her up and asked if she wanted to watch. She got dressed.

I was really expecting a small tractor with tow-behind tiller. He arrived with a truck and full-sized (small commercial type) tractor and mounted tiller! Took a little while to get it off the trailer and finish the hookup. Once that was done, it took him less than 30 minutes to till the entire area I wanted done. Tilled down to about a foot deep. You could definitely see the difference in the soil where the grass had been growing, which was much darker and richer than the garden are last year. 

Daughter dragged a chair outside to sit on and watch. She was fascinated but was most amused when she walked on the soil after he was done. 

Still too cold to plant most things out but warming up quickly. I may soon give a shot at lots of cooler weather crops, like lettuce, broccoli, spinach and such. I am still learning about things such as crop rotations, multiple crops on the same plot in one growing season and so forth. I do know I need to grow a lot of bean crops, which help anchor N in the soil. (Problem there is that I'm really not much of a bean person.)

The whole garden area looks really large. However, one side of that area won't be planted for at least 12 ft out from the fence, as that's where the new shed structure will go. Though that will serve well as walking space. I am also going to maintain a walking space through the middle and there's still soil not tilled on the other side. So there will be traffic areas on each side and through the center. 

I haven't yet planned the garden out for planting, which I need to do this week. Then I can section it out and start building rows.

Some of the plants indoors are looking really good, others not so much. Tomatoes look great and all 30 plants continue to grow. Happy for that one, as I am a tomato person. Watermelon plants seem to be dying off. Ornamental corn looks wonderful but sweet corn looks weak, few that have started. Some pumpkin plants look good, others not so good. I'm sure some of these things will do much better when I can plant them outdoors in real sunlight. Pepper plants look surprisingly good. Now that I know things will actually start well indoors, I'm not as anxious about rotating things out, starting some seeds inside and moving them out to replace plants as needed or as I change crops in one area according to weather. I've pretty much dedicated the shelves in the dining room to that purpose for now.