Saturday Gardening at Pistachio House

My beautiful bride Francine and I spent two or three hours this morning working on the garden. Honestly, we’ve been neglecting it this year, so there’s still a lot to do.

The plan was to get as much done as we could before the rain came today.

I focused my energies on the raised bed behind the chapel. Because we can’t see this from the house or yard, it has been very much an “out of sight, out of mind” situation. It was effectively a mass of long grass and bindweed.

I would’ve given a lot for a Rototiller! Instead, I cut down the grass with the weedwhacker, and then I went in with a hand tiller and broke up the turf and pulled as many of the roots as I could. 

I sowed the entire thing with a clover mixture, which I hope will smother out the remainder of whatever grass might still be alive. We want something low-maintenance back there until we can decide what to put in permanently. The clover should also fix some nitrogen into the soil, which is pretty terrible back there.

And then the drizzle began.

Man, am I going to be sore tomorrow.