An Update from the Vegetable Garden Cathedral

Vegetable Garden Cathedral

I spent some much needed time in the Vegetable Garden Cathedral this weekend.  Both the garden and I needed it.

The garden needed it because it was quite a weedy mess, with henbit (probably Lamium amplexicaule) growing in nearly every bed.

Henbit is a winter annual which generally shows up in early spring.  The trick to controlling it is to pull it out before it sets seed.

I pulled a lot of it out.

There was another weed which seemed pretty rampant in the Vegetable Garden Cathedral,  but I haven’t put a name to it, yet.  But I’ll name it and then figure out how best to control it, too. In the meantime, I pulled out as much of it as I could.

I also, finally, sowed seeds for lettuce, radishes and spinach, and planted out onion sets. Onion sets are those tiny onion bulbs you can buy in most garden centers in the spring. I am a little late in sowing the seeds for those cool season crops, but I think I’ll still get enough lettuce, radishes and spinach to make it worth my while.

Earlier today, I pulled out the six blueberry plants growing out in front by the garage and replanted them in the narrowest bed in the cathedral. The acid-loving blueberries don’t look great, and probably will alway be less then vigorous due to our alkaline soils I decided it would be better to put them hide them in back rather than prove to all the neighbors that it is difficult to grow blueberries in our soils.

The blueberries are now in the same bed where I had planted three apple trees and lost two last summer due to fireblight.  The lone remaining apple tree, which was thankfully in the center of the bed, is now flanked by three blueberries on each side of it.   One question that remain unanswered at the moment is if there is another apple tree nearby in someone else’s garden to cross pollinate my apple tree.

Time will tell.

With the cool temperatures and plenty of sunshine, I was happy to spend time in the Vegetable Garden Cathedral, even if most of the time was spent on my knees weeding.

It’s where I come up with some of my best gardening ideas.

And this weekend, I came up with a good one…