Morel hunting

Today's morel hunting was cancelled due to rain; but here's a small group that were found last weekend at my son and daughter-in-laws new ranch land here in the Rogue Valley in S.Oregon.

Since it's raining, I doubt if I'll get garden time today and it's just as well since I'm tired and sore after a couple of day of digging out rocks and tree roots, making some new beds and planting.

The past couple of days I've planted potatoes, onions, leeks, fava beans, carrots, beets, some annuals and perennials. I also dug up some herbs and transplanted those in the Secret vegetable garden so I'd have more room for flowers in the flower bed behind the house. Shallots that were temporarily in one of my earth boxes had to get moved to another spot. I still have a few more of those to move and plant and garlic that is temporarily housed in another earth box has to get moved as well.  

I do companion planting and many of those herbs work well to keep the bugs away from the vegetable and fruit plants,  I've planted thyme near the cabbage family plants and will plant the oregano near the two new grapes I planted this season. The garlic does well near the lettuce and is supposed to ward off black spot when planted near roses. It also wards off aphids on the roses.

The past month I've planted six new roses, so I'll plant some of those garlic transplants around those. The garlic is also good planted near peas, and cucumbers.

My first peas are up about six or more inches and a later group is up about three inches, I have the earlier ones in a couple of window boxes and they'll be replaced with heat loving flowers or peppers  once our S.Oregon summer high temperatures slows them down.

Building a new gardens over meager, old, neglected ones is a lot of hard work, but I do see some light at the end of the tunnel, The raised beds are done and I'm just waiting for the newly planted asparagus to show some signs of life and growth so I can fill in the channels with all the soil that is blocking me from prepping the last area for planting tomatoes in another month,

Tomatoes benefit from being planting near the asparagus which helps prevent nematode damage to the roots of tomatoes.

If anyone is interested in learning more about companion planting there's a wonderful little paperback book titled "Carrots Love Tomatoes", by Louise Riotte.