It’s raining and that’s a wonderful thing for a variety of reasons. The garden is very happy to be getting some much needed moisture. I can stay indoors and write this newsletter and I can procrastinate another day on the list of chores to do in the garden. I always like spending my time there but I have to admit that some chores provide greater pleasure than others. Right now there are a couple of big beds that really need their natural vegetation, (aka weeds,) removed. It hasn’t been done in quite a while because it has been too hot to contemplate and the soil has been so hard and dry that removing the roots of unwanted plants is a major task. This rain will actually make the chore easier. The greatest joy of this, is being able to stand up, (not always easy,) at the completion and admire the how good the bed looks. These beds have most of my Asparagus in them, as well as a range of perennial flowers and that presents me with a dilemma. If I mulch these beds heavily in an attempt to control the weeds, will that slow their spring warm up and thus delay the start of the Asparagus harvest next spring. It may only be a few days but when it is the first fresh vegetable of the year, those days seem very important. Maybe I should get them both weeded and mulch one of them to see how much difference it makes to the Asparagus.

It’s at this point that I wisely decided to hit the “save” button and thus discovered that this issue of “Dallying In The Dirt” is a bit of a milestone in that it is the 100th issue of my newsletter. Looking back I can see that the first was produced in February of 2007 some four years ago and I’m amazed that my goal of every two weeks, 25 issues a year, has been reasonably well maintained. I do hope that all of my readers, and there are a great many more now than there were for issue #1, enjoy the insights into my garden and tips for yours, as much as I enjoy producing “Dallying” for you. Your feedback and questions have been delightful and I hope we can continue this dialogue for some time to come.




The Raspberries were tasty this year if not as prolific as other years. They were a bit late starting and then the heat and drought really decreased the size and the quantity of the fruit. By the time I realized that I should be running a soaker hose on that part of the garden, it was to late. Our trip to Newfoundland occurred in the middle of Raspberry season, a bit of poor planning, possibly. One of the new varieties that I added a couple of years ago seems to be a bit of a rampant grower and spreader but it does not produce very large fruit. I may have to rip them all out and plant some other variety there next spring. Getting rid of all the roots and shoots of this variety may be a bit of a challenge. The rest of them now need to be pruned now. Summer bearing Raspberries fruit on last year’s growth. Now that they have finished, I will cut off all of the old fruiting canes and let the new green canes have room to grow so that they may produce a good crop next summer.