Living in Minnesota, I've been reading with envy all the reports of those 
of you from other parts of the country who already have your gardens in.  
We've had to wait both for the ground to thaw and for the resulting slop to 
firm up enough to work.  Also, night time temps still dip into the thirties 
on occasion.  This weekend, things were finally right.
   We rented a roto-tiller (we'll have to get one of our own when we get more 
serious about this) on Friday as I had the day off from work. (The drive to 
the city and get paid for it kind.)  We figured it'd be better to do on 
Friday 
rather than wait for the weekend as that's when most people would be doing 
it.  Judging from the crowd at the rental center when we returned it Saturday 
morning, we were right.
    Our Garden area hadn't been worked in over a year.  We just moved in last 
July and the previous owners had let it go.  It was all high grass (formerly 
part of the hay field), ragweed and thistles.  I went through there on the 
mowwer last fall and knocked things down so it'd wouldn't be too hard this 
spring.  This weekend I went through there and tilled what was mostly sod 
into 8 long rows with strips in between that well just keep mowed.  We 
decided that would be nicer than having to tramp through the mud to work on 
the garden if I tilled the whole area.  I made one pass with the tiller just 
to mark things out and then went back over each row as many as 4 times to 
really work the soil.
    Having layed fallow for a growing season, the soil looks *really good.  
It worked into a rich dark soil and the sod and weeds that got turned in will 
become, as Mort Mather likes to call it, a good green fertilizer.
    My S/O went ahead and planted the cooler weather crops and we'll be 
waiting another week or so to put in others.  I list the varieties when I 
know them.  We put in Peas (Sugar Snap and Little Marvel), Carrots (Sweet 
Half Size), Raddish, Beets (Detroit Dark Red), Lettuce (Black Seed) and 
Spinach.  Later we'll be planting Squash (Butternut), Watermellon (Sugar 
Baby), Onions (Early Green Table and Dry White), Beans (Stringless Green 
Pod), Cucmbers, Dill, Basil (Italian Sweet), Tomatoes (King's Choice and 
Supersweet 100 - both Hybrids) and Peppers (Garden Salsa Hybrid and Hugarian 
Yellow Wax).  We've already got the Tomatoes and Peppers planted in a cold 
frame although they haven't started sprouting yet.
    We'll also be moving some of the Strawberries out of the Hay Field into 
one of the rows and the same for the Razberries that got planted in the 
perenial garden.
    The reason I don't know a lot of the seed varieties is because of the way 
we got them, kind of neat in its self.  We went to the Mill on Friday to buy 
Goat Chow and while we were there, we noticed that someone had set up a shelf 
where there were jars of seeds with a seed packet taped to the outside 
identifying what seed was inside.  You measured out how much you wanted of 
each seed and poured it into a provided packet.  It was much cheaper that 
way.  We got 8 or 10 different things for about $5.
    We're going to be *rolling in the fresh veggies this summer and fall! 

        Byrd Mann
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