Planting Seeds

Today I planted seeds: radishes, lettuce, peas, and spinach. The above photo is from the day I turned over the garden beds. Below you can see some of the seedlings growing under lights waiting for the weather to warm up.

Breaking Ground

Today, since our guidance counselors were teaching the social studies classes, I got out into the garden and turned over the beds to prepare them for planting. I was able to dig six new beds which increases our total to twelve. It was a perfect day for digging. Not too cold and not too warm. Being that we are trying to focus on sustainable agriculture I have been using a great hand tool called a broadfork (you can see it with the two handles in the photo above). It is about thirty inches across and has seven long tines, or spikes, that are driven into the ground. Then, by pulling backwards on the handles the tines lift up, break the soil, and aerate it without mixing the layers or chopping up our good friends the worms. By the way there are a lot of them in this courtyard. Not only is the broadfork a great workout, it doesn't use any petroleum products. Double bonus! There are about two hundred seedlings under lights waiting for it to warm up enough to get in the ground. Near the end of the school day there were mating pairs of red tail hawks in the area as well. Triple bonus!