Gardening is a dainty activity?

Now I do use the gloves I bought in the co-op here in November - Nitrile. I bought several pair of the Thermal ones but don't like them at all - too bulky but they are warm.

I call it soil. Having lugged home 30 tons of mulch from the dump to establish the gardens, using the wheelbarrow to cart it around, dig it in and then add the tons from our compost piles it's soil or earth to me. Dirt is what Harry brings in on his paws. Still, I love working in it and don't mind using the Clorox though the newly arrived rose scented body wash is ever so much nicer to breathe in while I shower.

Sharran, I wear gloves for practically everything I do. Some of them are pretty disreputable but I wear them.
Pirl, That is one big stump, your not likely to let something stand in your way. LOL Love that shirt.
Is that your Veggie garden in that pic? Looks so neat and tidy. Love to see a few more pics of that.

Jack starts out by planting seeds downstairs, under lights...

and here's the lettuce that were seeds above...

Tomatoes...

just planted out in the garden before he puts down the red plastic.

Jack's cucumbers grown on his own copper creations for ease of harvest (never happens that way)...

Peas are much better behaved and don't sprawl as the cukes do.

Tomatoes growing and just about reaching the top of the tomato tables he built.

View from the opposite end of the vegetable garden.

As each tomato reaches the top of the "table" they go to fruit and they're much easier to pick from the top than when we were crawling around on the ground to harvest them.

There are pepper plants galore and the harvest is wonderful.

I do like the outside of the vegetable garden as well.

Here's Jack opening the mesh door to the tomato room at the end of cleaning up the path.

The end.

wOW Pirl, you have a great husband there.
It must be so satisfying to see the seeds sprouting.
Your beds are very neat.

He's the veggies and I'm the flowers. I don't post photos of when the vegetable garden really needs weeding!

Here's the one I couldn't find earlier when the garden is really growing.

How could I forget the asparagus garden? Here it is at rest.

And sound asleep.

Growing time.

Worth the wait.

Thank you so much Pirl, Tell Jack that is a beautiful Veggie garden. We have ignored our Veggie Garden for years. Just let the perennial weeds take over most of it. About 2 years ago I talked to Ric about us starting the clean up process and getting it back into production now that we have more time. The first year I cleaned most of the weeds out of the dying asparagus bed and it has come back beautifully, we cleaned up a small area and put in a few things. Last year we expanded on the cleared area and planted some more. This year I hope to finish up cleaning out the rough edges and really getting it looking good. In fact I'm going to an all day gardening program with several different speakers and one of the topics is Not Your Ordinary Bean Patch — Decorative Vegetable Gardening

Thanks, Holly.

One year we saved the seeds from a few different colored peppers. I put them in pots downstairs. Not a thing happened for two weeks and then they all rose up the same night to a height of about an inch - each topped with the Pro Mix. We had over 200 pepper plants and they went in with all the daylilies and other flowers and looked so pretty. Naturally we gave 90% of them away but it was great fun.

Pirl, all of these photos are so inspiring, but not quite enough to make me grow vegetables. I did that the first few years I lived up here, but I stopped when the neighbors started hiding whenever they saw me approaching with a wheelbarrow of surplus produce. My plants produced ten times as much as my son and I could eat.

I call it dirt when I have to pay for bags of potting soil at the nursery. I like to point up the incongruity of buying something that seems so readily available for free.

Many years ago Ric tried so hard to get me to Veggie garden. He just didn't get it, he started out by tilling up a nice big spot and planting seeds and then wanted me to weed, pick and freeze. Of course back then I had a full time job, 4 kids and a barn full of animals. Yea, I was going to Veggie garden.....NOT. Then he tried tilling, planting and weeding. He would even come in the house with a basket full of veggies and said "Ok just get them in the freezer". Yea, lets see tonight's, Julie's gymanatics, tomorrow is PTO meeting, next night 4-H, sure I get them in the freezer just give me a couple of days...maybe next week. LOL
I will say when he finally did give up the idea, I did miss the fresh veggies. In the years since we just let the area go but never really did completely give up the idea. We would clean up just a small spot and grow some pumpkins maybe some pepper and tomatoes, never much but now we have plenty of time so I'd really like to give it a good try again.

I don't have an inch of space left for anything like that. I'm an unrepentant flower floozie and if something doesn't produce lots of flowers, I don't have room for it.

I am a self confessed flower floozie also. I did purchase some veggie seeds this year, but they will go in pots on the deck. If they grow enough to transplant.

I never go outside without my gardening gloves and I actually have a whole wardrobe of them, including thermal ones for winter, gauntlets for rose pruning, and disposable ones for digging in the bog garden.

For one thing, I get stung a lot and the bees used to sting me mostly on my hands. For another, I got a really nasty wound in my thumb once that took more than a year to heal. You might think it would have been a splinter from all of the redwood in my garden or a thorn from all the roses, but it actually was a splinter from an iris leaf. I was pulling off the spent iris foliage without gloves one day and a big sliver from a dried leaf got imbedded in my thumb. It was impossible to remove and I thought it would rot, fester, and dissolve, but it kept going through the rot and fester sequence for about a year and a half before it was all gone. It was incredibly painful and a big nuisance all around, so I've worn gloves ever since.

I dont like gloves either but after the iris leaf story I am a convert.

I have the gauntlet rose gloves (2 pair so it's guaranteed I don't lose any of them) as well as cheapo gloves, warm winter gloves that were never meant for gardening (but work so well), the new Nitrile and Thermal gloves and then the surgical gloves, which are my favorites but wouldn't have been any protection from the iris incident, Zuzu.

It's generally the yellow jackets that manage to sting me and it's the back of my neck they prefer.

Take that "Man against Wild"
Bet he wouldnt survive a day of moving mulch.

Carrying the barrels of mulch takes off weight faster than anything else.

They can't get under my hair to sting my neck, Pirl, but they do get trapped under my glasses and sting my eyelids.

That's right! I remember when that happened to you!

OMG how awfull.

"Carrying the barrels of mulch takes off weight faster than anything else. "

Now that is an idea! Anyone interested in doing an exercise video ala Jane Fonda?? Would definately be best seller. Just think how many more plants we could afford! LOL

For just the asparagus garden I think it took 30 barrels of compost. Thank God the compost is very close to that garden.

Three of our six bins of compost can be seen here with the asparagus garden in the foreground.

WOW Pirl you are the best

Not the best but maybe the most tired at the end of those long days in the garden. Having fresh asparagus that tastes so good, and having it for 6 weeks, is pure heaven.

Sigh....