This morning I was running behind because I had a nice chat with a fellow mom when I dropped T off at his school (he goes 2 mornings a week). I was also still taking it slow – today was my first time having kale with my breakfast in almost a week!
When I finally made it to the garden, I worked on raking and moving soil to level out the bed where the next strawberry planting will go. We have about 25 or 30 feet of drip tape out there, which will be fine for the 25ish crowns that I have in the fridge, assuming they are still viable as I haven’t checked on them in a while. I’m never very happy about the soil getting chisel plowed or raked when compost wasn’t applied first, and there are some weird things about the soil in the south side of the field. It sounds like a former owner brought in soil to cover up a, um, small pond that formed in the winter. This might explain the sinkhole that I filled in last fall (or this spring?) at the east edge of the field.
I was hoping to get out there this evening to throw compost on top of the bed, but it didn’t happen. I also need to hoe out weeds. Speaking of weeds, there is buckwheat out there! I was surprised to see it, since we’ve had some low temperatures- last night at 4:30am the thermometer outside the house said 34 degrees (and my phone backed that up, as it was the temperature that it showed in the morning). Supposedly buckwheat doesn’t like the cold. I barely made it out there tonight to turn the water on for a bit and check to see that there were no major new leaks.
I really want to get fava beans into the ground. I’d like to put some at the end of the Chandler strawberries. The raccoons have still been digging that area (and the garlic and onions) up like crazy. We have a bed that we’ve been saying would be favas, but it got really messed up by the tractor. Z thinks we should put the beans into the 4inch deep furrows and rake over them. That _might_ work, but would the beans be too deep?
farmingmum 
I’m not familiar with fava beans, but I would think that would be a lot to deep for most seeds. If the buckwheat survives and you don’t plan on harvesting it somehow it makes a great chops and drop fertalizer and green mulch!
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It’s hard to say with the fava beans. Some sprouted after we chisel plowed and raked where they’d been (and gone to seed) last spring, which is why we have so many growing already. The landscape rake for the tractor digs a few inches deep, so it might really move the favas to an inch or two deep.
There are really only a few of those of these buckwheat seedlings. They prefer warm weather, so I was surprised that they are growing at all. We’ve had near-freezing temperatures a few nights!
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