Time's a Wastin'! - DIG IT! Magazine

June 17
A week later, between rain and work, I haven’t been in the garden. I know I’ll skip the digging and go for twisting the pitchfork in the soil – except for one shovel-width next to the fence so I can lay chicken wire down. I’ll forget the quarter and half-inch wire because I’ve learned I have moles in my yard, not voles. Voles are for veggies and moles eat meat, Marvin, a CT master gardener, tells me. And moles make the hills that are all over my field that makes walking bumpy.

Time’s wasting. Got to plant that garden this weekend, starting tonight after I get back from visiting Burpee for an article. That ought to get me going!

June 10
On my walk today, I saw new wildflowers- panicled hawkweed, yellow goatsbeard, sweet yellow clover, common cinquefoil. The sweet scent of multiflora rose and a choir of songbirds on this dewey morning make this country road heaven.

The dog pen is rototilled. The tiller couldn’t get close to the fencing, so my digging has begun. Thankfully I live on glacial till and, although stones pervade the soil, it is beautiful and loose. It’s never been turned over, except years ago when it was planted in grass.

Lance suggests I loosen the soil with a pitchfork, then dig. He is right and I find myself, after pitchforking, just yanking out the weeds and grass – roots and all. I wonder if I even need to turn it over. Shades of Square Foot Gardening! One of Mel Bartholomew’s tenets is NO DIGGING So, who says I have to dig around the fence line? I don’t think I will! I just saved myself some hard work and hours.

Now my little “dwarf” shrub garden on the hillside next to my house beckons. I weed it, trim back a mugo pine and plant most of my seedlings that survived – seven thunbergia.

June 2009