Gardening

I worried that the garden supplies site I ordered from was a scam. But I found no negative comments online, it was an https site, it had a decent privacy section among all of its boilerplate policies, and it took PayPal: I trust PayPal for protection.

It was the great price for the item (a crop cage for my blueberries) that was borderline suspicious: not ‘too good to be true’ but so close. ‘Click click’ and I thought “Nice, I’ll get this in a week or so.”

The order confirmation was eyebrow raising, without site letterhead, the payee was an individual and not ‘the site,’ and I was *sigh* “Let’s see how this pans out.”

Cutting to the chase: after not getting any responses to my multiple inquires, over time, concerning the order progress, I submitted a claim against the site to PayPal, and PayPal refunded my $98 within minutes. Damn!

Thank you, PayPal. FU gardencheapest dot com!

I waited too long to send in my soil sample this year, so I decided to roll the dice and just go ahead and fertilize/lime loosely based on recommendations from an old analysis: 40#/1000 sq ft 5-10-10, but just 25#/1000 sq ft with the lime. I’ll watch the plants and adjust if necessary, or possible. Here’s hoping!

After adding the amendments on Saturday, I rototilled again. Today I marked out rows, raked the soil smooth, and planted two packages of Progress #9 peas.


Peas are the far row.

Last year I planted our Bonnie veggies too early, mid-May, and had to deal with frost. This year I’ll buy the plants around or after May 18th and wait until Memorial Day weekend to put them in. In the interim the soaker hoses need to get readied and placed. So much fun!
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While finishing up today I realized I had company of sorts.


Watcher in the woods.

More precisely, gardening! Lots of raking and trimming were needed in the garden in preparation for rototilling. The tractor wouldn’t start, of course, without a bit of persuading (cleaned up the starter/Bendix and charged the battery). That being done I was able to haul a couple of loads of detritus off to the woods.

Next came the rototiller. When pulling off the blower to clean/oil the ratchet-clutch, I found it had housed mice over the winter. I blew out the grasses, fur, and hickory nut shells, and then got the ratchet-clutch in order: this part is notorious for hanging up on the crankshaft and damaging the pull-cord assembly. I reassembled all, cleaned up the spark plug, added some Sea Foam to the old gasoline before topping off with last Fall’s stabilized fuel, and my 38 year old little Pony started on the first pull! Love this machine :o)


Smaller garden, primarily for pumpkins.


Larger garden, for everything else.

I still need to get a soil sample off to UConn for testing. I also have to finish cleaning the outside perimeter ground level below the electric fence, and replace some of the insulators. Slow and steady.