Progress continues...

 Yesterday the boys who did a lot of the work a month ago came over to start working on my 10x10 box - the one the bunnies recently vacated.  First I had to move the chives and walking onions to my onion box where they will now reside.  

The boys came and first, they cleared all the mugwort and mint from around the edges of the garden!  They spent a good 45 minutes pulling and hauling weeds before they set to work starting to clear the box.  This boxy is so dodgy and needed to be dealt with.  years of back and forth and such lead to weird mounding and depths throughout the whole area.  With the boards and bricks removed, the uneven depth of the box is a lot more clear.  

I wanted to focus on one side of the box, if I could get the tomatoes in this weekend, then I knew I'd be good.  So they dug down to the bottom of the existing lumber and ripped up old weed barriers and other things - like long lengths of roots.  They then lined the bottom with cardboard, hardware wire, and weed barrier before adding soil.

The results are beautiful!!!

I will be able to add a simple frame down the middle and string some twine for the plants and add my indeterminate (vining) tomatoes.  I have my "galaxy" tomatoes (Super Nova, Moonbeam, Midnight Pear) and my Atomic Grapes.  I can also transplant my determinate (bushing) tomatoes to their box - the San Marzanos and Romas for sauces.

I tell my students that indeterminate tomatoes are, "Oh, you would like a tomato, here have a tomato," all day all summer while determinates grow and flower and then suddenly yell, "TOMATOES, WE'VE GOT TOMATOES," and are done shortly after that.  You get a LOT of tomatoes at once from those plants and each one is important.  The indeterminate tomatoes are great if you want something on a salad or to pop in your mouth.  I wouldn't make a sauce from cherry tomatoes, even if I might cut some in half to throw into something I'm making.  On the other hand, I wouldn't put a Roma on a salad.  Each tomato, like each person, has their own way of being and enriching our lives somehow.

I planted a couple of dozen corn seeds over a couple of feet in one box (or was it three dozen over four feet... I have to go and look today), transplanted a bunch of pepper plants, and the peas are almost tall enough to start latching onto their poles.

I left some room for eggplants and this week I'll have my son come over and finish the other end of the 10 x 10 box so I can get some squash in.  I love that the boys are now taking ownership of my plot.  Before leaving, one of them was, "We'll get the old PVC and lumber cleaned up next to put in the bean teepee.  I would say they have more than earned their CSA share from what comes out of here. ;)