APRIL 2024 TO-DO LIST

There’s been quite a few changes I should update y’all, but to avoid making this blog post too long I’ll save the updates for a later post. As the title shows, this post will be dedicated to talking about my April To-Do List. I was able to knock out most of my tasks on last months list except for amending/ fertilizing my raised beds and Disinfecting my chicken feeders/waterers. Since I spoke on those tasks last month when they were first added to my To-Do list I’m not really going to talk about them again, just know they are up there on my list.

One update on this little ole Ranchette I’ll share because it has to do with a lot of the tasks on this months List is that….Drum Roll please…. WE BOUGHT AN ELECTRIC TILLER! (Tiller Link)  Okay, this may not seem exciting to some but this is a total game changer for me and my Garden plans! My husbands been really putting some focus onto our yard the past couple months so it’ll be ready for our summer hangouts and when he told me he thought we’d benefit from an Electric tiller I definitely agreed ;). Don’t you love when your spouse has an idea that benefits your hobby that took no persuading or convincing from your end? Me too!

This brings us to task #1

1. RE-LAYOUT THE GARDEN- I was really leaning on raised Garden beds because it was easier to maintain for the amount of time I had to put into caring for them along with the amount of physical labor it would take to break up hard ground using a hoe or shovel alone. The tiller breaks up and blends the soil in a fraction of the time, I know because we already tested it on the raised beds I previously cleaned out and hoed up last month. TOTAL GAME CHANGER.. so now that we have this handy tool, I don’t need to build the raised beds I intended to build, I can just till up and plant rows of crop straight into the ground giving me more leeway on where and how I want the garden layout. I’m excited for opportunity for a bigger and more fluid garden, if I don’t like how I planted this year I can switch up next year without having to plan around where and how my raised beds are laid out. I’m still using the raised beds I currently have though, I won’t be getting rid of those anytime soon and I may still add smaller raised beds later on. Since I do have some plants ready to go in ground I’ll have to update the new garden layout ASAP but its a task I’m excited to do. 
2. TILL UP IN-GROUND SPACE- Once I get the layout planned I can break up the hard ground and get it ready to plant. The ground is full of weeds and the dirt is packed down so I’ll water it heavy for a few days before I go in with the tiller just to make it a little easier to manage. It’ll be a weekend project depending on how large I decide to go in the new plans. The plot of yard we’re doing this on is fairly big.
3. AMEND/FERTILIZE GARDEN SOIL- This is one of the tasks I wasn’t going to go deep on since it was touched on in last months TO-DO List Blog (Here) but now we will also have to do a soil test and amend the in ground garden area to get ready for planting too. 
4. HARDEN OFF/ THIN OUT SEEDLINGS- I started a couple trays of seeds and they’ve been thriving in our mini greenhouse (one of our Ranchette updates) but it’ll be time to start hardening them off for planting soon. If you don’t know what hardening of is, Hardening off is the process of allowing protected indoor/greenhouse plants to acclimate to the harsh outdoor conditions of full sun exposure, temperature changes and wind. You can harden plants off by setting them outside in the open for short periods of time every day and slowly extending the time until they are out a majority of the day, this can take 2-3 weeks. 
5. PLAN GARDEN FENCE- This isn’t a priority but I’d like to have a plan set in place for when the time comes that we need to add a fence to keep out critters, our garden is out in the open and unfortunately we get MANY stray dogs around, now stray dogs have done drastic damage but they have dug up in the garden in the past. 
6. DISINFECT CHICKEN MATERIALS- This is the last task for our April To-Do list. Again, I’m not really going in to detail because this was addressed in last months To-Do list and it just wasn’t done so I moved it over to this months list. My lovely Husband Ryan cleaned out the coop for me the other day while I was working on another project so I just need to go back and disinfect the feeders, waterers and the nesting boxes along with the faux bedding I line the nesting boxes with. 

That’s all for April’s To-Do list, and even though I’m getting this list out late (4/8/24) I’m confident that I can get everything I listed knocked out before May. Let me know what your list for this month is and maybe we can keep each other motived and on track! As I mentioned before I have quite a few updates to share with y’all about Red Dirt Ranchette so keep an eye open for that blog post coming up! Like always, thanks for hanging around and sharing in this chaotic life of mine and follow us on Social Media for more day in the life content. XOXO

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