Been fighting a bit of a flu bug for a couple days and just feeling a little whipped. But I’ve been worrying about getting my garden in better… and the weeds and such in my beds where we just dumped all that good compost and such and let it set for two weeks while it rained like crazy!

Problem is, it’s been pretty darn hot out too, and with feeling a bit gimpy and the heat, just wasn’t working out to getting this chore done!

So I asked my dear daughters if they would help me out this Saturday morning, early, before the heat rises and of course, they said sure.

Basically, my goal was to get the new raised beds weeded and then lay down a biodegradable weed block to knock out the crazy amount of weeds they seem to have. I don’t mind pulling weeds but this was getting out of hand last year. I got the 5 year fabric and I think that it will held to get the beds a little more easier to manage.

With all hands on deck, we actually made pretty short order of the whole process. Only about an hour and we had 6 beds weeded and fabric installed. That felt good.

And we decided to plant our carrot tapes and see how that went.

If you’re not familiar with carrot tapes… I think you might be in for a pleasant surprise. Carrot seeds are so small, that one tends to just broadcast them and then after they start to sprout you thin them out. That is always kind of tedious and seems a huge waste of plants to me. I have seen in the seed catalogs, a tissue paper tape that has been embedded with the seeds at nice little intervals. I know you can make your own too and we are going to do that with some other heirloom varieties this week too, but for now, we are talking about the seed tapes.

They were not that expensive… I think only a buck or two more than the regular seeds. Each packet had two thin strips and over 100 seeds. I got these from Guerny’s. I believe about $4 a pack. You did a little trench and then lay the tape in it. Cover it back up and you’re done.

Pretty darn easy if you ask me and no waste. We planted two packs in about 15 minutes. The tissue is very light and I can see that in no time it will just degrade and the little seeds will spring forth! Can’t wait to see our little carrots in pretty little rows!

As you can see our onions and garlic are doing wonderfully! The elephant garlic is coming up and strongly and the red candy onions are all doing nicely. We have another 100 onion sets to plant and a pack of radish tape to try out as well. Just not sure where I want to plant them yet. I want to get all my tomatoes and peppers in the beds first and then see how it all looks. I believe I might have overdone the whole tomato adventure this year. I might be giving some gift of heirloom ‘maters to a few friends… Hmmmmm….

Started to feel a little puny as the heat was rising, so we called it quits for the gardening day. They offered to help the next couple days and we’ll just tackle things as I feel better. Took a nice long nap today and did a little reading and I admit, I’m feeling a little better this evening. Maggie had it the first of the week and now I have it end of the week. But it’s a nice long weekend and I have most of my client work all done and tidy, so it’s not a bad thing to have to lay low and do a little reading and watch some DVDs and chill out.

Tomorrow I want to plant my beans and peas, and maybe sunflowers and corn. I think it’s warm enough for the corn, it’s been in the high 80’s all week long. I’m going to soak it first though, because I got MUCH better results from soaking the seed in a little warm water for a few hours before I planted it last year. That’s the goal for tomorrow’s yard work!