Night gardening deserves a quiet night

One evening this week, Monday, June 20th to be exact, my Hubby and I planted our new blueberry hedge around the two outside edges of the potager.  I ended up deciding on 'Northblue' plants since they looked nice at the nursery and Auntie Linda, who grows just a tiny ACRE of these blue beauties, gave her seal of approval to the performance of this northern-hardy variety.  Apparently they've only failed to produce once in twenty years for her, that's a pretty solid record in my book.  I don't really have it in the 'budget' to buy eleven #1 gallon blueberry plants, so Hubby and I declared them his Father's Day gift, pretty much making them a necessity.  That's how we roll.

I wanted to act like a sober gardener and plant in straight rows for once, so I actually measured and marked the rows w/ paint before digging.  They are planted on center 4' away from the outside veggie boxes.  'Northblue' is supposed to get about 3' wide so theoretically we'll still have a 2.5' path between the blueberry hedge and the boxes once they grow and fill in.  I planted them 2' apart in row so they'll make a solid hedge eventually.  Also dug the holes extra wide and mixed a 3.8 cubic foot bale of peat moss in with the existing soil when planting to give them a tasty, acidic snack.  Will have to figure out a fertilizing schedule with an acidic fertilizer for the future to maintain their preferred soil pH.



Blueberry row on North edge of garden, at the far corner is a 'Cinderella' dwarf crabapple.



The West edge (far side in this shot) now has my transplanted rhubarb clump between arbor and the corner, and a short row of blueberries again between the arbor and the house.

On a side note, I'm re-reading that book from the library, "Designing the New Kitchen Garden: An American Potager Handbook", by Jennifer Bartley, that initially inspired my Potager Plan.  She talks briefly about ancient monasteries in Europe, where the monks would grow everything they needed for all of their meals and herbal medicines in the potager kitchen gardens of their self-sustaining, isolated outposts.  Somewhere along the lines of less ancient history (my vague summary, not hers), people who were into potagers began planting tree-form roses as centerpieces in their potager garden beds to symbolize the monks out there working in the garden.  Not having a tree form rose (and none that I know to be truly Zone 4 hardy anyways), I have declared my dwarf 'Cinderella' crabapple on the corner to be the monk in my garden.  Now get to work, Mr. Monk, weeds need pullin'!  Thanks, buddy, beers on the patio together later, OK?

We got a bit of a late start on our planting work that night after putting Violet to bed, and then stayed out later to mulch the blueberries in, and then even later to re-mulch the entire garden with our new, free mulch (see previous 'Hug a Tree' post) around all the boxes so it would all match.  Before I knew it, it was 10 PM and pitch dark.  A successful work night, I'd say.