Rain coming

I spent an hour working on the new section by hand, pulling out more roots and even turning a few spots of sod by hand.  Make no mistake, it's ugly.  Some of it is merely native sod covered by loose soil, and there are tree roots everywhere.  But there is a lot of rain forecast for the next week so I crossed my fingers and planted a cover crop.  My experience with buckwheat in this garden has been poor, even though buckwheat has a reputation as the ultimate smothering cover crop.  For me it comes up weakly and shades out very little.  So I put oats, field peas, and daikon radish in this strip.  Just broadcast it and then dragged the spike tooth over the field once.  The seed is actually covered quite well and I think having it seeded this early should guarantee a nice stand, of something anyway.   I will work it up again mid-season and plant another cover crop.

At the complete opposite end of the garden is this strip which is finally giving up some of it's crabgrass.  This end is lower and wetter.  I am beginning to think that these lower areas are going to be more suitable for warm weather crops like corn and cucurbits, and maybe even celeriac or onions.  Anything that doesn't need to be planted so early.  I hitched the team to the cultimulcher after spike toothing the above and was very pleased.  For once the cultimulcher ran smoothly and I was really impressed with how well the clods were dug out.  I am working on an improved design and maybe with a week of rain I will get started on it.

I shot these the below videos two days ago to give you some flavor of working out there.  The team is getting better, I am getting better, and the soil is getting better.