I only did 1.5 crops, lol. I also listed a lot of things that I hope to grow in 2017 🙂

I pulled dozens of slugs off of my biggest dino and red russian, and green kale plants today. Dozens. Big ones, too. I spent an hour stabbing, smooshing, and slicing them. It was awful.

It’s not quite enough to make me use Sluggo (iron phosphate), but ugh. Need to keep plants from “bridging,” which makes it easy for slugs to climb from one plant to another. I would like to remove the shorter-length low-tunnel so I can get to those kales easier. Even after last week’s major cleanup, I keep seeing huge slugs in there as I’m walking past. You should see the strawberry bed. And it’s so wet – we’ve had an inch-and-a-half or so of water over the last few days.

We have gotten 13.04 inches of rainsince the beginning of October, which is over a third of our average annual rainfall of 36.28 inches and 159% of normal for this point in the season.

See end of post for what I’ve got this week.

We went away for 4 days last week. I couldn’t bear to be away from the garden for any longer, so we kept the trip short. Also, we had trouble communicating with our cat sitter, so the cat didn’t get any visitors until halfway through the trip, and the raccoons ate her food and drank/dirtied her water.

There was yet more rain while we were away, and even more on Saturday, which was the day after our return. The tomatoes, basil, and most zinnias are like, “I’m done.” I haven’t taken a very close look at the strawberries, although I see that there are some flowers in last year’s bed.

The ground is really very wet. I can walk down a bed and then on the way back, the gopher tunnels collapse or I just sink into some clay.

Mostly I have just been keeping up with turning the compost every day to keep getting air in to hopefully dry up all that water. Today I collected zinnia, tomato, and basil plants. I trimmed the comfrey, chard, and a few of the basils, and cut and chopped some corn plants. I brought 2 wagonloads over to the compost area. There is so much dead plant material to pull out of the field!  I pulled out some tomato cages, but ran out of time for putting them away.

I had to do so much cleaning today that despite the beautiful weather, I didn’t get out to the garden until after lunch! At least I got 2 hours.

I’m going to a farm business planning workshop this Saturday and Sunday. It’s a bit much to give up the whole weekend and miss a birthday party, a crafts fair or three, and a bookfair. 😦

Availability:

Pumpkins – large and small

Tomatoes- a very small amount

kale: dino, Red Russian, green leaf.

Collard greens (from 1 large plant)

Chard (white)

Purple-podded peas (but they taste bad to me!)

some fava/bell bean leaves

herbs: borage, plantain, some rosemary, some oregano, some pineapple sage, comfrey

flowers: calendula (yellow, white), yarrow (white flowers), some borage, some zinnia, some small lavender-colored cosmos, some chamomile

small amounts of some other things

It was hard to believe yesterday that rain was supposed to fall this weekend. I took the above picture of Grey Kitty late in the afternoon. I hoed and raked the buckwheat out of what was supposed to have been a pea bed. After lunch, I went running into the garden while pulling the wagon behind me, tripped over the hose that’s right inside the gate, and landed on the ground. I am not sure what is injured in the top of my foot, but it hurts, especially if I flex the foot or turn to the side. One wrist is sprained more than the other and there’s also some knee pain. But I knew that I only had an hour or so of garden time left, so I kept going. I planted fava beans on most of the west side of the bed, and maybe 1/4 of the east side. I used what appear to be daikon radishes as my markers. They really could be daikons, since I tried broadcasting them before a rain 2 years ago and I do find them here and there. Yay, I finally planted favas!

It has rained 2.64 inches in the last 24 hours. It was supposed to rain maybe 1.5 total. The garden is holding up okay, since it hadn’t really rained all month (just like .08 inches).

Tonight I pulled out some bad strawberries and leaves, put compost on the worst bits of exposed soil along the west side of the bed, pulled slugs (so many, I hate those things so much!) and low-hanging leaves off of the newer kales, put straw on the path across the middle of the garden and a bit near the spigot (the woodchips from last year have pretty much disintegrated), put a bit of straw over the garlic and onions that I planted last week, and turned my 2 compost piles. My foot didn’t hurt too badly in my rainboots, thankfully, and it felt good to be moving around.

One big difference from yesterday is that the pumpkin plants are done. The brown leaves are wilting. We did have frost a night or two this week, so I guess that the rain just finished the job. I need to get the rest of the pumpkins out of the field, but there isn’t really a place where I can put them. The zinnias are also way more done than they were yesterday. 😦

 

I am really not getting enough work time in the garden. I am almost done planting my 2 pounds of garlic, but the seed is getting old fast. Tonight I was considering planting more but in the dark, I was not exactly sure where I didn’t plant last night. This week I did hoe space for the onion seedlings at the end of the east bed of greens. I haven’t even opened the box they came in. We just put it straight onto the fridge when it came.

This week i’ve managed to clean up the east side of the strawberries. The other pests have been largely replaced by rapidly-growing slugs (boo!). A lot of berries go bad quickly, but there are starting to be done nearly-ripe ones that look ok.

The snap peas are pretty much done. there are shelling peas (I think) at the other end of the bed. I did a lot of weeding under them this week. We still have purple peas in the next row. I have a feeling that they are supposed to be eaten after they turn green. The purple ones are just gross!

I have kept the compost in a condition that is slightly better than normal by turning it almost every day.

I am feeling pretty down from getting so little sun and exercise. 😦

Hint: its wings are outstretched, it is flat

Today I realized that in advance of potential rain (since downgraded), the best thing I could do was plant some garlic. The soil in many places is not too wet for planting (I hope). I planted a pound of Org Chesnok Red garlic (from PVFS) in east greens bed and in the Seascapes. This got me up close and personal with the grass around the collards, spinach, and broccoli in the low tunnel. T helped and was even able to climb in and out of there by himself. As can the cat.

I found that T can break up a bunch of garlic smoother than I can, but then he starts peeling the clove- so we may be equally bad at it. 😉

I’ve been working hard at turning the compost this week to try to get it to dry out. It’s rough. It’s amazing how the pile keeps shrinking to the same size, even if I add stuff to it every week. I am not good at composting anymore 😦  But I have been thinking that a worm bin could help to finish my piles. We almost got some straw bales today (some of them could have been used on the compost, and some on the ground around the pile), but the place closed earlier than they had said they would. Boo, Barlas Feeds!

I need to use this bed for something else but the pollinators are so happy with the flowers!