Finally cleaned up the front section near the fruit trees (where water puddles in a hard rain) and made room for two rows of elderberry plants. We had taken cuttings from our old bushes and started them in flowerpots – all of them grew nicely over the winter. We rototilled the rows, and made them far enough apart for the lawnmower to fit easily (so we can pick from both sides). Each row has about eight plants each. The remaining elderberry bushes will be planted in the blackberry rows to keep birds away from the blackberries – apparently birds prefer the elderberries, and this approach had worked really well for us before.
Quick update on the garden status:
- planted 4 Carolina Gold tomatoes
- planted 4 Better Boy tomatoes
- 50 sweet potato vines
- 1 pack of watermelon seeds
- 1 pack of cantaloupe seeds
- various varieties of sunflowers and cosmos to fill in the rest of the row
Today we pulled one of the flowering potato plants out and it had 6 nice sized red potatoes on it (already). We also pulled out 3 rather puny red beets – they need some more time to grow! Lars rototilled most of the garden – he was very careful between the rows of plants and did a great job!
