The veg garden is underway (but not completed). [View all]

Looking at the economy and general national situation, I decided last fall that this was the time. I've done herbs for years, along with pole beans and pickling cukes on a trellis before, but at some point, the little bunny bastards began chewing the veg off at ground level as soon as they started to come up. I gave up on everything but herbs.

But I and a wonderful helper spent 10 hours yesterday clearing the side of the house, 7 feet out. We haven't done the whole thing yet because there's a gas line we can't till near. This is the patch that will include raspberry bushes and a winter squash patch (this year is sugar pumpkin and a kind of a butternut/acorn cross - butternut flavor and acorn size if the picture and description are to be believed). So we've done about 26 feet out of 36 feet. Cleared (mounds covering broken up concrete, bricks and associated rubble), tilled multiple times, including tilling in composted manure and topsoil, and the bunny fence started.

It looks weird to see it all flat - those mounds have been in place for the 40+ years we've lived here. The soil looks less bad than I imagined, but isn't near as good as the 10 feet I've been growing on for a while. I'm not fond of chemical fertilizer anyway, but since Idiot's Hormuz blockade is making that unaffordable, composted manure seems to be the best bet anyway.

Still to come is hand-digging and preparing the remaining 10 feet, most of which will be fenced. Latticework is going to be hung for trellises and everything will be grown vertically that will accept it - beans, sugar snap peas, eating cukes, pickling cukes, 2 kinds of tomatoes (instead of caging or staking). I'm going to need to figure out how to store a lot of cabbage. 3 kinds of onions, not counting the scallions and leeks. (We like our onion family.) In the fall, I'll start garlic for next year. Carrots (Danvers half-longs), beets, red bell and jalapeno peppers. Lettuces and herbs, of course.

From the old garden, I moved a rhubarb plant that's never been successful, along with spearmint and chives, I put them all in a large pot while we worked, and the chives and rhubarb didn't love the new digs. So I've already moved them into their new homes and we'll see if they survive. I'd miss the chives - I started them at my parent's old house 50 years ago and just kept moving them whenever I moved. If the rhubarb kicks it, I'll just get another plant and try again. Where it was, it never got more than pencil thick and drooped depressingly. This place has more sun and a hell of a lot more manure. It may be that the original place was just too non-nutritious. The mint loved the pot and I was tired of pulling it back from where it didn't belong anyway. If it likes the pot, it can live there.

Anyway, I'm more sore than I've been in years and keeping Excedrin in business. My (younger) helper does this for a living, so she's in better shape, so I hope she's doing better than I am, but I'll bet she's feeling it too. She's helped us improve the house for several years now; I'm sure eventually she'll need to stop doing private jobs - she has a full time job - but we'll be happy to pay her for as long as she's willing to do it. Gods know, I couldn't do this on my own.