So I took advantage of a nice Sunday to start preparing the ground. Where did all those weeds come from already? I used a garden weasel to till the soil.
An old hoe came in handy to pull up some of the weeds. As did an old trick I learned in the Boy Scouts---if a tool head is loose on its wooden handle, soak it in water for a while. The wood will swell up, and the head will become fixed, at least until it dries out again. Since we found the hoe under the several feet of mulch that originally covered the garden, it is not exactly new. In fact, it is pretty rusty. I suppose I should get a new one. But it seems so satisfying to keep using an old tool.
I got about half the garden weeded. I also started digging up the areas where I intend to put plants and filling the holes with compost (a mixture of mine and leafgro which I purchased from Rockville High School, which is part of my plan to gradually improve the soil.
This is a lot more than I have done in the past. My main strategy for cleaning up in the past involved Roundup, which worked pretty well as long as there was a warm day before I wanted to put in the plants. Roundup seems pretty benign, but I am trying to reduce chemicals this year.
A few onion shoots are starting to peak up. I stepped in the onion row by accident, of course. Nothing seems damaged.
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