I've been meaning to get stuff in the ground for a few weeks now, but I finally did this past Friday :) It was a rare sunny spring day, so I kinda had too.
The house where I'm at these days has a cute fenced in garden bed that my housemate grows all sorts of delicious in. Since I didn't get around to sheet mulching & cover cropping the bed for the Fall (oops), I decided that the soil definitely needed some help before the summer crops. I did all sorts of math stuff to try and estimate what amount of compost I needed to buy. Our bed is 144 sq ft and a half yard of compost would have been good. But, I ended up being able to eyeball it at the store anyhow. I went with 2 bags (ea. 2.8 cu ft) of organic compost from the garden store 2 streets over, Livingscape, and turned them into the beds a la digging fork. I put in beans, peas, radishes, purple carrots (!), kale, and chard because they all will produce by the end of May (except the beans) and be outta the way for the heavy hitting summer crops. Also, they're all "light" feeders, meaning that don't deplete the soil of much nutrients and the roots & legumes are "nitrogen fixers" - bringing useable N to the upper parts of the soil where the next round of crops can reach it.

Making the garden map is one of my favorite parts. If I was really detailed, each of those dots would represent a seed planted so I'd have a more accurate estimate of how many plants I'd end up with, but that's ok. My map is pretty minimal in style, but has all the info I need when I'm trying to remember when I planted something and what should go where the next season.

p.s. Here are a couple fotos from the weekend.

sunset picnic at Skidmore Bluffs

Thyme infused vodka + limeade at Beech St Parlor. Their food is good, too!