Tilling in the Rain!

This spring has been crazy for me and my garden! First we had crazy weather and then my time was taken up largely by building my deck. On top of that, I made a great big garden to do list which included a complete redesign of the vegetable garden raised beds!

To get all of this accomplished I have had to resort to creative scheduling of my time like taking days off from my day job and building raised beds in the middle of the night by moonlight. Well now to add to that list, I roto-tilled the rest of the garden in the rain!

I included that last picture so you can see the raindrops in the trees. Even though it was raining pretty hard the ground was still pretty dry a few inches below. Since I am expanding the beds past where they were last year, I had to till some areas that were sod last year. The spot that was next to the end of last year's beds were particularly dry and compacted. You can see what I mean in this picture. Look just ahead of the rototiller tines.

These new areas do not have very fertile soil yet. I am going to have to use a lot of organic fertilizer on the beds in those areas.

I don't like using a tiller in the garden. I am against using it every year like many row gardeners do. Over-tilling destroys the soil structure and causes a hard-pan which that hinders root growth to form where the tines have pounded the soil. After this year, I will never use the tiller here in the vegetable garden. Unfortunately in my Kentucky clay soil, it is necessary to till where I haven't gardened before.

So till is what I did! I tilled in the rain for over an hour. Right about the time I finished, the clouds broke and the sun came back out.

This vegetable garden still doesn't look like much, but it will in a month or so. The most interesting thing to watch so far is still my extra early tomatoes. Notice them there at the bottom of that last picture?

Now that it is tilled, I will add a couple more raised beds and a fence to plant my corn in. Hopefully I will have prettier pictures to show soon!