the old tangled kitchen garden

The robins are back, preening themselves up on the power line and poking around for worms in my house garden, the kitchen garden: the old multi-layered archaeological site around the house, where generations of people have grown food, buried scraps, and lost trinkets. which unearth with my fork as I shake loose couch grass root and loosen up soil.

When I moved here in May last year, I had my hands full with plowing and cover cropping the soil, which was old sod, for this year's garden; dozens of other projects (new waterline, repairing old rooves, fencing for the cows, etc) kept me from much work in the kitchen garden. Having a season to observe whats happening in a very old, ovegrown garden is a good thing; there are many treasures there like four variety of grapes, including a very tasty, small, rosy coloured mystery, which have propagated themselves copiously. There are egyptian onions, iris, chives, oregano, lavender, spearmint and gooseberries and a catoniaster that has entwined itself with loganberry in a into a huge tight ball of tangle. Raspberries have forged ahead everywhere, as has queen Anne's lace and yarrow.

I've pruned the grapes well back and am rebuilding the trellis. I composted and mulched, clipped, cleaned and mowed the 20 by 8' intof raspberries into semblances of order. Its raining today after three days of sunshine and its a good day to untangle the catonia-disaster.

I did manage to lay compost down in a third of my new garden (about an acre) and planted: mizuna, tatsoi and arugula, tri-coloured radish, japanese salad turnip and spinach. Beets and ruby chard are up in a bed in the hoophouse. I'll post pictures and write about my main garden later today.