A Little Garden Work

It has not been the most productive day for me. Frankly the whole week was rather terrible and I just didn't get done today what I felt I could have but to give myself a little credit my back is hurting a bit more today (and it had been getting better) plus the weather is changing from cold, then to hot, then cold, then hot again here and my sinuses are really not taking it well. Anyway, all excuses aside, I did managed to get a little bit done. We loaded the truck up with trash to take to the dump which is all the way on the other side of town. I also cleaned out the big freezer first and got rid of anything that was no longer good. It is a shame how much I had to throw away. We need to do better with that.  We went shopping because we always go shopping on Saturday. We went to two grocery store, a dollar store and the thrift store. Deals are quite hard to find these days and today was no exception but since I had gone through the freezer, I knew we didn't really need much. We also went to the feed store, of course, but I only needed pig pellets and laying mash. We then visited Wal-mart (I would give a lot to never have to go there). I wanted to get some bags of their "hummus and manure" to help finish off some of the raised beds and I also got a couple bags of top soil to mix with it and the compost already in the beds.
When I got home and got things put away I went out to feed the animals. The pigs are always very upset with their late breakfast on Saturdays plus they only got pellets and no good eggs or yogurt. Tomorrow I will treat them to something better.
Came in, turned the eggs in the incubator and then took a break to rest my back ( bags of feed are heavy even on your shoulder and mine have to come all the way around the house and into the back shed).
I finally couldn't stand thinking about all the things in the greenhouse that needed planting and went and got the pink blueberries to plant. I had decided to put them in the raised bed that was supposed to have cucumbers planted in it. I just don't want them up in the berry garden since I just plain am too lazy about getting it watered (apparently).

I was rather disgusted with these when I removed them from the box. They, of course, are in a plastic bag in the box and it is usually filled with some sort of planting mix which the plants are growing in. In these there was the planting mix but in that was a little 2 x 3" pot in which the root bound blueberries were. I likely would not have bought them had I known their roots were confined to such a small pot but it is too late now and we will see if they enjoy their new soil or not.
I spread a bag of manure and a bag of top soil on this bed. The "top soil" was a disappointment this year as well, but it usually is. One year it was almost entirely small wood chips. This year it was at least 50% sand. That is not exactly terrible when you have clay soil to begin with but it is not what I would call "top soil".

The soil on top is the manure, the lighter stuff underneath is the "top soil"/sand.

 I also planted potatoes in the deeper new bed, and covered it with some manure, "top soil", and a bit of half composted compost (I meant to put more on but shoveling is not nice on the back, maybe tomorrow).

I will fill it in more as the potatoes grow.

The broccoli has started to flower so it will be pulled and fed to the chickens. I am actually thinking about planting the tomatoes. We have a whole week of 80 degree weather coming up. Normally when we hit 80, we seldom go back down. But I have not quite decided yet. The red cabbage isn't ready to pick yet and tomatoes have to be planted in their spot when they come out too so I may wait and plant the tomatoes all together. I don't know yet.
Anyway, I don't want to leave you with just empty beds to look at so here is the lettuce bed. It is looking pretty good.

 And here is the bed that has onions and spinach in it. The spinach has not done so well. There is only about 5 spinach plants that have come up. It is possible that we just had too much rain lately. The bed really haven't had a chance to dry out any but as you can see the onions don't mind it at all. Sorry, the sun was on the lens. I should have taken the picture from the other side.