I have read a number of websites and books that refer to how to set up an asparagus bed. By and large, the approach is pretty similar across the board, although there does seem to be some disagreement on whether the whole plant-and-slowly-fill-in-the-trench approach is really necessary. I think I've followed the basic instructions, and as a result, my third box is a bit of a mess right now - there being nowhere else to put the dirt from the trenches while waiting to slowly fill it in, I put it on the side of the box that didn't have anything planted in it, thinking that if asparagus truly grows 10 inches per day (it was in one of the books), I'd get the dirt back in the trenches and be able to put in the berry plants quite quickly.
That was about 3 weeks ago, and I'm still waiting. In fact, I've reverted to childhood, and am having a hard (and not so successful) time not digging the crowns up to see if anything is happening. The only sort of progress that seems to be occurring, and it might be a delusion on my part, is that the crowns are closer to the surface of the dirt than I remember planting them.
Short of standing outside the box yelling either encouragement or aspersions at the plants, the only thing I can think of to do is to take the excess dirt out and put it on a tarp in the corner for a while. That, or just bury the stupid things now and let them figure it out, or not. After all, we don't even get to harvest from these plants at all until next spring, so they have some time to get their affairs in order.
On the weather front, I hesitate to admit publicly that it's really beautiful right now - statements like that tend to invoke blizzards around here in spring. The trees are leafing out and flowering a bit, and the skies are clear and the spring shade of blue, and I've been able to skip bringing a coat to work for a few days this week. And the peas are sprouting - although I think I have something eating a few of the seeds (do squirrels react badly to pea inoculant?) along with more lettuce and more of the brussels sprouts.
I finally cracked open the boxes with my new tomato supports this past weekend. They're as tall as I am and very sturdy. Of course, putting them into half-barrels is going to make the tops at fingertip level, I think, but they are fairly thin, so we should be easily able to handle 2 plants per barrel. While I was puttering with them, I also set up the wall-o-waters in the tomato barrels; I'll give them a couple of weeks to warm things up and we should be able to get tomato seedlings in by the end of the month.
We bought a new composter this year at Costco, since the original one is very hard to work with - scraps go in, and I think compost is being created. There is a panel at the bottom on one side that, I think, provides access to the finished product, but I can't get it to come off and it's short and difficult to get into. I did attempt to turn it all once, and that involved pitch-forking it all out onto a tarp and then back in in reverse order. Anyway, bottom line is, it's a real pain and we've never got anything useful out of it yet, even if it's doing useful things. The new one is a tumbler - or will be when we get it built. The assembly instructions, which came in three languages, are about 30 pages long and require 2 people and power tools. Seriously? I feel like shipping it off to Sweden to the folks at IKEA to get it redesigned properly. So for the moment, it's sitting in pieces in the garage until we both feel like tackling it and can find the drill.
No progress on the blueberry front; my husband's been down for nearly 2 weeks with a bronchitis of unspecified origin (although the doctor refers to it as a fairly common complaint in the area right now - I vote for H1N1 or the seasonal flu), and can't talk for more than about a minute without doing his dying-of-TB imitation, so ordering the necessary stuff is on hold. That, and we just had some plaster repair done in the house and have had to repaint large swaths of wall (note to self; work on the inside of the house should be started in November when the temptation to work outside is at its nadir. Unless, of course, it shuts down the only shower in the house, in which case it should be done in August - yes, there's a story there).
Time to cross my fingers and do sun- and rain-dances, and pray for warm weather, so the rain doesn't solidify and start breaking things.
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