As the weather is finally turning to warmer weather on a daily basis, my thoughts turn from weeding the beds inside the greenhouse to preparing the grow beds outside. As my back is in better working order now, I’m working on moving decayed organic matter from the big pile in the back to out by the gardens where I put a generous amount using my wheelbarrow onto the raised beds. The piles get smoothed out and then I take my favorite tool, the broad fork, and push the blades deep into the soil and pull the handle back to about my waistline and then stand it back up. What this does is open up the soil enough to encourage deeper rootgrowth penetration as well as allow the microbes and earthworms to come to the surface and take the nutrients down deeper in to the soil. What this tool has allowed me to do is grow better quality crops that have been a challenge with my shallow soils like carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes and parsnips. All those crops grow mainly below ground and are harvested by digging the vegetable out of the ground. The broadfork actually is beneficial to all the crops because of opening up the soil, allowing better water penetration and deeper root growth. It’s great to get back outside and getting my hands dirty.
