The List.

No, this is not my "Bucket List" (although there may be actual buckets involved at times). The problem or advantage (half empty/half full) of gardening is that the work of art known as a garden is never "done". There will always be another new cultivar to experiment with, or something that needs moving, dividing, or tossing out...mulch that needs to be added to, turf to remove to create new beds, containers to plant, pruning, or something to deadhead, etc., etc. You get the idea. In addition to all of the things on my list that I know need to be done, I must make the time to learn something new.

I suppose that winter is a great time for this 'learning', when there remains nothing else I can possibly do. Since it might be 15 degrees Fahrenheit outside and air that bites if I do anything more that hurry out to warm up the car; a hot cup of tea, a cozy chair and a stack of gardening books sounds pretty good. But winter is not the only guiltfree time to take a break from the toil. I have grown a little wiser after all, and finally figured out that it is OK, in fact a whole lot smarter, to take a siesta during the sun's most brutal hours of midday in the middle of July or August.

Lately, I have been reading a couple of books that I picked up at the thrift store for 50 cents each. They both are about 30 years old or so. It is interesting to see how commonplace thinking has evolved in that time. One book is from Rodale Press: Mulching the Organic Way and was first printed in 1971. The tone of the book suggests that it was a rare breed who practiced organic gardening or did any kind of mulching at all. What a novel idea! Of course, it was nothing new, but an idea that had made it full circle. For thousands of years, agregarian peoples who did "garden" made do with the best that Mother Earth had to offer in order to nourish their crops and enrich the soils: from manure to fish to seaweed and everything in between. In dryer climates they had to find a way to keep the crop from shriveling up for lack of adequate moisture. Of course, irrigation has been done in one fashion or another for many thousands of years, but nothing inorganic about that. But that job would have been rather inefficient and labor intensive, unless a way was discovered to slow the moisture from escaping the bare soil.

Speaking of mulch (and I was) this is what occupied my non-siesta hours today; in the cool of the morning and again later in the afternoon. I had to remove the broken field tiles that I had placed for mulch around the tulip poplar planted a year and a half ago. Originally, I had made a circle around this tree and an earthen well around it for watering. The tiles had worked fine for weed suppression, but the radius of the circle was a little too tight for the lawn mower. Soooo just to make things a little easier this year, I removed all of the tile and expanded the circle by about a foot all the way around. I am all for making gardening chores easier! The moisture content in the soil was just right today, as I was able to take the sod that was removed by the shovelfuls and easily shake the soil loose and back into place. The chickens and geese were right there with me the whole time. They helped me out by quickly snatching up all of the grubs and earthworms that appeared. The geese did double duty by devouring all of the dandylions, roots and all. What fine helpers, I have!

That finished, I stirred in some bloodmeal and some bonemeal. I had never fertilized this tree since planting it, so I supposed that it wouldn't hurt and might help. [Note to self: get those soil tests done next year.] I did add a root stimulator when we first transplanted the tree. This particular brand "Bonide" was a liquid concentrate and 4-10-3 percent Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium respectively. I am still working on learning how to do everything "organically", as well as figuring out the definition of that word, since "Organic" gardeners will use elemental sulfur and limestone. These are certainly chemicals, but not tampered with in a lab, I suppose. But I digress.

Tomorrow, I will toss down a couple of bales from the hay loft and mulch the bed with flakes of 50 year old hay...after a good ground soaking, of course. Hey, it's free, it's organic and it works! I will replace the field tiles as they are more attractive than looking at flakes of old hay. Then the plan is to pull it all back and fill the bed with tulips and grape hyacinth in the fall. Not only this bed, but several others around the yard as well. I am already anxious for the early season extravaganza next spring!