Garden Time

Geoff and I have spent a lot of time discussing thoughts for this years gardening, but Saturday we actually got our butts out there and did some work.
The kids loved being out there, and had lots of fun running about and really were very good helpers. Geoff did a lot of garden tiding and covered 5 1/2 beds, a job we should have done by Nov, with old silage sheets. He also dug up our first batch of this years Jerusalem Artichokes and the kids pulled the tubers out of the dirt pile and put them into baskets. I think the Harvest period starts in Nov for these, but we seriously neglected the garden in 2008.
I pulled out loads of plants vines and remnants of tomatoes, flowers, peppers and more and weeded a whole bed, effectively digging it over in the process. I found the garlics that I had meant to harvest last fall and they've all sprouted. I'm guessing that I've got about 20 sprouted garlics from the 5 bulbs I meant to harvest last time. So I dug a channel about 2 inches behind the row of snowdrops (the kids loved our first flowers)and planted have of the first bunch of garlic with a nice 5 minutes gardening/biology lesson with the kids.
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After a very hard morning and afternoon, we flew out to the garden just before the sun started setting. I really felt better for being out in the fresh air and did some tidying before going to help Ruthie weed her garden patch. David joined us, he loves digging, and together we decided that Ruth and David would share her patch instead of each having a separate one and I've said they can half @ 1/2 of the raised bed to work in, with Ruth planting stuff that's just for her towards the middle, since she's taller and can reach in. I was very pleased with how nicely the kids discussed it. I suspect that we will end up leaving an empty patch just for David to dig in. He prefers the soil to the sand pit, which I need to find a home for and setup again. It got pretty disgusting last year, full of insect larvae and stale dirty water as David kept digging soil and adding dirty rocks.
Unfortunately, Ruth's good attitude didn't last, and having pleaded with Daddy and I to be able to stay outside with me because she wanted to be a good helper, she then became very annoying doing exactly what I repeatedly asked her not too, whining and pestering. But more on that current trend, maybe, in a different post.
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Gardening pictures to follow