A Small Setback

I haven’t posted in a while, but it’s OK.  I have a note from my doctor.

 

 

My heart decided to attack me on Memorial Day weekend.  I thought I had been being pretty good to it, but it begged to differ.  Everything else was suddenly shoved to the back burner while I (1) enjoyed hospital food, (2) quaked in fear, (3) rested a lot at home, and (4) tried to figure out what to do so I wouldn’t ever get another one.

 

The weeds saw their opportunity and moved in.

It’s disheartening to see, but philosophically only a minor blip in the game of life, I suppose.

This is more like it.

Today was dahlia planting day and it was lots easier than the glads yesterday.  I found a piece of channel steel amongst my odds and ends and clamped it to the bottom of the sub-soiler, thinking it might spread the dirt better.

Trencher

It actually worked pretty well.

It  got a lot of the dirt out of the trench, and what was left was soft enough that I could just push the dahlia tubers down through it and get them at a depth of about 6 inches.

Fifteen minutes of hunkered-down scrabbling along was enough to get 100 tubers planted.  The tractor did the rest of the work, filling the trenches by driving backward using the loader bucket to smooth out the soil.

All Covered Up

And I never touched a shovel.

Glad The Glads Are In

I really need a wide furrow maker.  Call me lazy, but my feeling is that moving dirt in any way is best done from the seat of a tractor.  The  sub-soiler attachment did a good job of loosening the soil, but that was about all it did.   I still had to dig the trench with a shovel and that wasn’t a whole lot of fun.

I put 200 gladiolus corms in this trench and another 100 elsewhere.  Next will be 100 dahlia tubers.  I’m not sure if 400 corms/tubers is enough to bother making some kind of little V-plow dealie to bolt on the sub-soiler, but it sounded like a super idea when I was shoveling.

Some Progress Is Being Made

INSIDE

OUTSIDE

UPSIDE DOWN