Third, a ramble.....

I am pretty sure that all Alaskan gardeners are in a scramble, just like me. Night time temperatures are coming up (yay!) and our sunny stretch looks to continue for Memorial Day.

And like most Alaska gardeners, I wake up this morning with assorted aches and pains from the efforts of the past couple of days. I am about half done with the planting, having managed to get the greenhouse plants potted up-tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and some corn. Naturally, I picked up more sweet corn and those need to be planted today-but I can see the end coming!

In the garden, we top dressed the two veggie patches with the organic humified compost (locally made out at Point MacKenzie by Susitna Organics, amazing stuff!) then got the black plastic mulch down on them too. More tedious is cutting the holes and slits into it, when the sun is beating down on your back and you are simultaneously sweating and slapping mosquitoes. I have not spent that much time upside down in a garden since last spring, and let me tell you, my thighs and back are letting me know about it, haha!

I have three rows of bush beans in, and two rows each of peas-sugar snap and shelling peas. Today it is carrots and onion sets, plus the broccoli, cabbages, cauliflower, dill, and brussel sprouts. Keep in mind my two veggie patches are maybe 20 foot long, and one is about 14 foot wide and other about 16. So not very big gardens, as gardens go, but still ample space to produce goodies in abundance.

Carrots are very tricky to germinate here. Darned seeds are so tiny, and the surface of the soils can dry very quickly, so I will need to cut lengths of clear plastic and secure it over the carrot row to help hold in moisture and boost germination. I haven't had a lot of luck with onions here so this year it's an experiment only, in the newer bed. I was going to put in some beets but I honestly don't have room for another row, not with the amount of other stuff I need to get in too.

Today I need to continue hardening off. Everything is hardened to temperature, its daylight I need to work with. So, that means loading up everything onto a medium sized trailer-baskets, containers, squashes, etc-and moving them in and out of the garage for about five days. Otherwise, everything gets sunburned-not good. I start with about two and a half hours, then four, six, eight, and ten on following days. By the time they are out ten hours, they are good to plant out permanently.

The pile of dirt from the old garage wall beds (emptied and in a jumble back behind the greenhouse) is going to serve as my pumpkin area, and that will be covered with clear plastic sheeting over small diameter pvc piping. It sure works like a charm for those pumpkins. The rest I am going to stuff into one sunny bank that has a bunch of old horse manure in it, just to see how they do ;)

Yesterday I delivered the remaining summer squash to the other greenhouse. When I walked in, I immediately ended up helping customers who just kind of presumed I worked there, haha!! Of course I was clueless about all the bare root stuff, but I was tickled to see that the majority of the veggies I had delivered had been sold. It seems that greenhouse was about the only place to find cauliflower in the whole valley, haha. And the owner asked me to come work on weekends next year, since I am very very good with counter sales and helping customers. So I think I will probably do that, why not? Weekends are when they are busiest and its truly a three person job.

On a different front, today I am getting in a new horse for about a month. The gal who has been riding Sully (subject of another blog entry, coming soon) found an opportunity to get her horses up here from the Lower 48 for a reasonable amount of money. She decided to start working three horses to help pay for it-and one of them is coming here, and another will be hauling here at least three times a week for work too. I am happy to help out, enough that I lowered my board to a very thin margin just to help make this happen.

Today I need to broach the "I need sand in my arena" subject with my wonderful husband who has graciously agreed to just about everything I have ever said I wanted. However, I think I blew the wad on the greenhouse...........

Speaking of, will take some photos later today, even if the place is a jumbled up mess!