April 26, 2012: Garlic, onions, tarragon, peas, lettuce, blueberry flowers

April 22-watered all

April 23-dug up old landscape fabric (3 layers! From south end of veggie patch, next to old strawberries---so, so difficult, buried down several inches.    So many long white grass and bindweed roots alive under all that!  Also dug up landscape fabric from in front of old strawberry patch.  Raked smooth. 

April 26-planted new blueberry and raspberry, watered all.

April 27: 0.2 inches of rain fell

April 29:  Watered new blueberry and new raspberry “sticks” with a bucket of water.   Cut asparagus (for soup!).  Transplanted a few borage seedlings to back of herb bed.   

Today I dug out old black plastic from in front of old tomato bed and onion/garlic bed—not nearly so deep nor so many weeds as I had encountered last Monday.    Also took up black plastic and deeper landscape fabric from path south of onion/garlic bed.  The old woodchips on top of this black plastic and landscape fabric I’ve been digging up were mostly soil by now, so I raked them smooth and think they will be fine for planting marigolds.  Digging out all this old plastic and landscape fabric has made me question using it anymore more than once.   But I think it served a great purpose when we used it—it got the garden under control at a time when we couldn’t keep up with the weeds.  Now I think I can---the soil is much better, the weeds far fewer, and my commitment much greater.  I like the idea of not using it for paths between the rows of crops---only as a weed control around annual plants like tomatoes and cucumbers, on the main new path through the middle of the garden, and the hope-to-be-installed at some point new paths around the entire perimeter.