I’m still pushing to get the garden dug. I have one more full bed to dig, plus I’m probably going to make a smaller bed for the corn. The weather’s been really rainy the past two days so it’s nothing but mud—terrible for digging, but great for all of the seeds and seedlings out there. I saw when I peeked out this morning that my mesclun salad greens had sprouted overnight. I planted them quite late, but since you harvest them so small I should be able to get something from them before it gets too hot.

I haven’t been good about getting my crops in early this year, but then again I’ve been preoccupied with digging the new beds. I think I underestimated just how huge the job would be. I gave up plugging the sod into the front lawn after I dug the first bed. It was taking way too long, so after that all of the sod went into the compost bin. At least next year it should all be a breeze.

Next week I’m going to buy materials to build some trellises. I’ll build two 7ft. stretches of trellis for the butternut squash and Collin’s gourds and then a series of horizontal trellises for the tomato bed.  I can’t afford to trellis the whole bed this year, so I’ll leave the determinate paste tomatoes to sprawl and just worry about the beefsteak and heirloom tomatoes. Next year I can expand.

I’ve eaten my first semi-wild food salad this year, and a semi-wild food stir-fry with Collin the other night. It just contained lamb’s quarters and dandelion greens in addition to our store-bought vegetables. Boy, lamb’s quarters are really delicious and I have a profusion of them in the side yard. To think I had been tossing them in the compost bin all this time. I do feel a little self-conscious out there picking weeds and then carrying them into the house for dinner. I doubt that the neighbors would even notice me doing that, but it still feels a little funny.

I’m still working on the garden expansion project. Unlike the bed I created last year, which was on bare ground, all the new beds are covered in grass, so I’ve been sod-busting—quite the slow and grueling process. It doesn’t help that I’m taking the sod and then plugging it into bare spots in the front yard. That seems to take even longer than digging it up. I’m running out of time to get it all done. It sounds like the weather’s going to be kind of lousy this weekend—we’ve had a long string of wet weekends now. But I need to push to get the garden ready.