Slowly but surely

The indoor sprouts are slowly growing. The first plantings of broccoli and tomatoes have reached the 4 leaf stage. The peppers have barely grown at all. I suspect they want it to be warmer. Out in the garden, all of the previously planted seeds have sprouted. That includes the peas, rainbow chard, pak choi, green onions, and bulbing onion sets. Yesterday I planted the rest of the onion sets, and I planted the potatoes.

For the potatoes, I dug trenches about 5" down, leaving about another 6" of top-soil above the hard clay layer. I planted the potatoes so that there is about 3-4" of room below them and they are covered by an inch or so of dirt. As the plants grow up, I'll periodically put some of the dirt back into the trenches, covering some of the stem. Supposedly new potatoes grow off of the stem, and this will stimulate production of extra potatoes.

I also did some weeding for the first time. There were a few places where grass or vetch had been brought back to the surface by the tilling and had re-established. I pulled all those out. Also, there were areas of the garden where bijillions of tiny baby weeds had sprouted up. Not sure where they came from. There were literally hundreds of these things per square yard. So I brought out the hoe (AKA the implement of death), and proceeded to kill hundreds if not thousands of baby weeds. I think that should send a pretty serious message to any weeds that might try to grow in the garden in the future.