Tilling Garden, Weeding Blueberries and Spinach, and Mulching Onions

It has been quite a long time since I wrote a post on my blog and since then it has been a busy week for gardening.  With the weather getting much warmer and all my plants are enjoying the outside weather it was time to get started with tilling the garden.

I usually start tilling when the weather gets consistently warmer and usually is in the beginning of May.  It all depends mainly on the weather especially if there has been much rain.  I don’t like to till when the ground is too wet and is better to wait for the soil to dry a little bit.  A moist layered soil is fine conditions for proper tilling.  Take a look at these pictures of my tilled garden.

Before

After

Here is another view of the tilled garden.

You can also see that I left a couple of plants in between the rows.  Feverfew, perennial alyssum, and a sunflower plant are all that I left.

I also weeded around my blueberries again making a larger area of bare soil.  Weeding around them is crucial because they have shallow roots which don’t compete well with other plants including grass.

Instead of adding fertilizer at this point I decided to try using peat moss which is perfect for acid loving plants such as blueberries.  They are plants that don’t mind living in an acid soil environment and can flourish in these unique conditions.

This is the peat moss I decided to use on the blueberries.

It is also OMRI listed.

You can tell that it is a very loose and dry material.

Peat moss placed around plants.

After weeding and adding peat moss to all of my plants I then gave them a good soaking making sure that the peat moss absorbed the water.  Since this material is very dry it took a really good watering to make sure it became moist throughout.  I gave each bunch of plants at least a gallon or more.

Then I placed some grass clippings around it that will act as a mulch to retain water and to reduce grass from growing around the roots.  I then placed quahog shells around then mainly for decoration.

I also gave my onions wood ash this week just before the recent rain storm we received.  I have never used wood ash before so I just gave them a solution of wood ash water.  I gave about each tote at least a gallon of water combined with the ash collected a week ago.

Once I gave them the ash they needed I then placed mulch around every onion plant to reduce weeds and increase water retention.  I do this because these totes can get dry very quickly and can harm your plants.  This also keeps the soil cool and the onions will not dry out before they reach maturity.

Weeded my spinach plants as well since there were many weeds starting to grow around them.  I like to keep the soil loose as possible this way the soil can easily soak up whatever water or nutrients you give them.  Doing this with all your plants can definitely increase the size and yield of your harvest.

Before weeding spinach.

After weeding spinach.