Lettuce

I have been researching all of the vegetables, fruits, and flowers that I am planting this year. But, I spent so much time focusing on corn and flowers that I waited until today to look up lettuce. I have found that they like the cold and hate the heat so planting early is better. The first recommended planting date is around the 15th of march. So by that date I should already be growing some inside to transplant out. I haven't even tilled the garden yet. Where the garden will be is still yard and where I would grow transplants (my porch) is still a mess. I think I will go home today drill a few holes in stumps and clean the porch off.

Killing Stumps

In order to speed up decay on stumps it is necessary to drill 1" holes in a stump to pour the granules down. I was able to get 3 holes in one stump before a previously fully charged battery went dead. I think this will be a long summer.

New Plan of Action

So the cleaning up did not work. I am still not sure if I have been charged for the tires on the Skid Steer. I will probably find out when they send a bill.

In the process of cleaning up I have noticed an abundance of stumps that I did not know about. By "did not know" I mean I forgot, was ignorant to, or had selective memory about. After a lot of research I had decided to rent a stump grinder and go at all of them. But now I have decided to plant the garden somewhere else this year and spend downtime this summer cleaning up. I am going to try to dig down around the stumps, poison them, and then take a chainsaw to them about 24" deep. Then I will fill the holes back in and dump some topsoil to cover the area then cover it all will straw or wood chips in preparation for next year.

I had looked into making a raised planting bed but to raise the area I wanted I would have needed 37 cubic yards which was almost $1300. FORGET THAT!!! Dirt should not cost that much!

Skid Steer Loader

So I rented a Skid Loader this weekend. Saturday went fine. I pushed most of our old garage into a pile and picked up several other bits of debris around.

Then Sunday arrived. My brother-in-law was pushing around old trees that he had previously cut down and when I looked closely I noticed that one of the tires was flat. The rim was just spinning around inside the tire. So we had to stop prematurely (1 or 2 o'clock) and waste the rest of the day.

I am hoping now that they wont charge us for the tires. They were already old and badly damaged before we got the thing. There were large gashes and nicks all over and they looked a little low on air.

Guess I will wait and see.