On Wednesday morning I was out in the Big garden by 6AM. I got the artichokes planted and mulched and laid out the tomato and peppers.
Next I prepped the area.
But the more I looked at it, the less I liked it. The tomatoes were just too close to the artichokes. They both need lots of room to do well. By this time it was 8:30AM and I was ready for a break.
So I took my paper copy inside and sat down to revise it. This copy from the website is how it was originally. I pushed the tomatoes down 4’, took out the cosmos row on both sides and altered the hollyhock area to its actual size.
This allowed 3 peppers to go across the hollyhock’s northern side, 2 paprikas to run down its west side, and 3 Kapija peppers to run along its south side.
The artichokes run just behind the ladder on the left. You can see there’s now 4’ between them and the stake where the tomato will be. I’d messaged my brother telling him I had the tomato area prepped and if he could put the stakes in tonight, on Friday when it’s stopped raining, my general helper and I can get this area planted and mulched and the second section will be done.
I got the new layout amended and prepped and I could do no more in the second section until the poles were up.
We’d used a lot of the loose stuff on the cabbages and they could really have been mulched with leaves of hay. So I slowly took off the loose hay to use where loose hay was needed, then I had to re-mulch the cabbages using leaves of mulch.
Then I got the last 20’ section weeded and then weeded the garlic.
In another 2 or 3 weeks there will be garlic scapes and I will have to make either pesto or pickles, depending on what my stores are.
So this was the Big garden when I finished at noon.
As I came around to get photos, the rugosa roses were in bloom.
There was a bee in one, but my camera was too slow to catch anything besides its wing.
As I walked back and forth to the garden shed, I saw the first flower on the mock orange under my bedroom window in the New East garden.
I got cleaned up, a shower, lunch and went to bed. My brother got home early, around 3:15PM and wanted to get the parsnip chowder we were making for supper started. Of course, we were carefully supervised.
We were talking about harvesting the parsnips on time this year and I was telling him about 
We got the chowder simmering and he wanted to go out and get the tomato poles up.
So we got all 14 poles pounded in and I’m in good shape to plant on Friday.
I was in bed at 8PM. On Thursday it’s to rain and my general helper is coming to run a bunch of errands. Maybe I will even get more done on bills/budget…