Cleaning up the garden! May 13, 2013

This post is a little late!  I began to clean up my garden during the week of May 13th.  For years  I've always heard never to plant before May 15th, even though the average last frost in my area is in April.  However this old tip verified this year with cold temps in the 30's at night leading up to the 15th.  This caused me to lug all my plants into the garage and back out on to the deck every day!  Bright side of the cold conditions is it gave me time to find a simple yet fantastic tool.  I found this hand tiller for about $25 at Lowe's, it works amazingly!  It not only saved my back from turning my garden soil with a shovel it also sped the process up greatly.  I actually tilled my whole garden within 15 minutes!!!!  It loosened the soil up great, which is good because it was so compact from the winter. Im hoping the soil is healthier as well because it mixed air back into the soil!  

Hurricane Preparation! 10/27/12

Hurricane Sandy is on her way to pound south western CT with hurricane force wind gusts, rain, storm surge and power outages. The storm is arriving on Monday October 29, one year to the day of "snowtober" (an early and destructive freak snow storm, where trees still had leaves!).

Saturday the 27th I spent some time prepping my garden stuff. Since we had an early frost this year most of the preps were cleaning up and winterizing. Here's what I did:

-Put all pots away in the shed
-Picked basil seed pods for drying and gathering seeds
-moved potted blueberry bushes into basement
-moved potted rosemary plant into basement
-moved new, and yet to be planted blackberry bush into basement
-I was surprised to pick some hot peppers 7 to be exact!
- put all bamboo stakes in garage