Busy in the garden = busy blogging

This afternoon, as tired as I was I dredged up the energy to put on sweats and a pair of garden gloves and got busy prepping my primary vegetable bed. It was a glorious afternoon with sunshine galore. My youngest son insisted on helping me double dig the soil. He's a great little helper whether it be in the garden sowing seeds or in the kitchen cracking eggs. He simply loves to be at my side with his sleeves rolled up, tackling a project.

So we dug and tilled until sunset - I have a nice tool called "The Claw" to help break up the soil. It's back breaking work but it really aerates the soil and allows the plant roots to reach as deep in to the ground as they want. I used "The Claw" to turn over the soil and Jason came behind me and broke up any large clumps with his mini-claw. We found many beautiful worms (red wrigglers) as we broke deeper in to the bed. The soil is dark and rich, slightly clay(ish) but still loamy enough to break up when crumbled in the hand. After working in the rich contents from our compost pile, the consistency became optimal.

The seedlings are still under lights as I type this but will be taken outside and hardened off over the next week. Before we proceed with planting the seedlings, I will be adding bat guano, earthworm castings and sea kelp to further fortify it. Earthworm castings, by the way also contain the eggs from earthworms in it and can provide a boost in worm population.

My good friend Gary Ibsen, founder of the Carmel Tomato Festival called me today to see if we could make a trade, my olive oil for his heirloom tomato seeds. Gary grows more than 600 varieties of organic heirloom tomatoes from around the world. It will be a tad late, at least for me, but when I do receive the seeds I plan on starting them. Gary's got some amazing tomato varieties and I have had nothing but success with his seeds.

Happy gardening to all!