Soil Amending and Seedlings

We don't weed around here. It's a rule, and we follow it to the letter! We shovel, we hoe, we cover with straw, paper, plastic... who cares as long as the weeds are suppressed. I say all this, but there is one exception, and it's a huge one. We weed our berries.  It's just so hard to use weed suppressants in a berry patch. Thankfully the strawberry patch is new this year. So no weeding them! Hooray! Unfortunately the raspberries have been neglected...

So that's what I did this weekend. I weeded the raspberries, the grass had really overtaken the rows. At times it felt like I was clearing sod, which by the way, was very convenient for patching grass holes in other parts of the yard!

After the weeding was finally done, I amended the soil with rabbit manure. It's great! It doesn't need to be composted before applying. It won't burn the plants. And hopefully, I've put a thick enough layer on that it will suppress the weeds!!

budding raspberry plant with rabbit manure amendment

All the plants we'll put out after the last frost are now coming up in the soil blocks. The melons and squash are growing so fast I'll have to transplant them soon! Overall germination has gone well. If you look closely at the picture you can see some of the tomato varieties we'll be growing this year.

Squash plant starts, Waltham Butternut and Vegetable Spaghetti

Tomato starts, Brandywine, Lucia, Pineapple etc.