Cleaning Up and Spreading It

The picture to the right is how our garden looked before we got started this year, and the one on the left is after we pulled up the black plastic.  We sort of were lazy last year and didn't get a head start on fertilizing the ground or even cleaning up after ourselves.

So, once we caught up a little bit, we then had to visit our special fertilizer patch (see previous post) and spread the good stuff around.  With all of the tools that Adam's dad has, a manure spreader is not one of them.

After we covered the field with manure, we gave it a few days until we went back to work on the garden.  Below is Jack, about to roll around in the freshly strewn manure.

Manure Happens!

Adam's parents race standardbred horses so we are lucky to just go out back and get fresh fertilizer for our garden.  We forgot to cover our garden last year,  so this year we killed two stones with one bird.



Adam's dad bought that orange tractor you may have seen in some of our photos a while back and puts it to good use in our garden.  We loaded this wagon up about 3 times and hauled it over to the garden which is pretty much next door to his parents house.  Then we scattered all this horse poo over the garden and let it rest for a couple of days.  On Saturday, Adam's dad with Adam's help, plowed the field incorporating all those good nutrients into our garden.  It took them a few hours to do but it is definitely worth it.  If you don't have access to fantastic resources (horses, tractors, etc)  like we do, Lowe's and Home Depot have a great gardening department.

I know this is about 2 guys, a dog, & a garden and you're probably wondering where the dog is in most of these shots!  If you look at the photo, our garden runs along the side of a road,  a country road.  And Jack Russells love to get into trouble, so we taught Jack (yes! our Jack Russell's name is Jack) to work the camera.  No, just kidding. He in the car (usually on the center console) watching us and not getting himself killed.