There is borage flowering in this bed!
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Found this in my “Drafts” folder
From around the summer solstice in 2016. Thank you, WordPress app, for closing and losing the long post I just wrote on my phone.
Yesterday and tonight I planted Bottle Gourd seeds in the eastmost of our winter squash roww. Had 2 packets but T took about 10-15 from first packet. Today I added alyssum and I think calendula to that bed. Also planted 1/2 oz of Kakai Hulless Pumpkins (center row, there might not be enough space for all these things). I took out the broccoli raab because it was nearly finished flowering and put some calendula seeds in its place. The calendula in the corn/bean row is starting to make flowers! The dill in the greens and tomatoes is looking nice. There are a few zinnias coming in at the head of the tomatoes, and maybe at the head of the north sunflower bed. (did I mention I planted some sunflowers on Sunday?).
I tried hilling some dirt around the potatoes this morning. It sure takes a lot of dirt! I didn’t get very far before I felt compelled to do other stuff – like pick strawberries. The Chandlers are really slowing down and I think will be done by the end of this heatwave, if not the week. Wow, 98 next Wednesday! I keep feeling like I should get more fruit-type things to plant.
Surely I can take a better picture than this…
How about
Sick and forgot important meeting!
Argh! T is only just starting to get better, and now I’m super-sick, and I forgot about this 4-hour meeting/potluck and I didn’t prepare for it or anything, and I’m so sad!
Very rainy winter
Well, after 6 or 7 inches of rain in like 5 days (8.9 so far this month, according to this article: Huge Bay Area rainfall totals since January 1 ), the whole property is soaked. Z was right to suggest that I harvest kale from the north end of the garden. To do that, I walked through our marshy yard to the less-used north gate to the garden. It’s just too wet in the area just inside the central gate.
This is going to take a long time to dry out. We are planning a birthday party for next month, and I wonder if we will need to change it to an off-site location…
We’ve gotten over 80% of our average annual rainfall in 100 days (it only rains about half the year, which runs Oct-Sept).
Will I manage to do any of this?
I did some crop planning!
I only did 1.5 crops, lol. I also listed a lot of things that I hope to grow in 2017 🙂
So many slugs. So. Many.
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.
Late-planted favas are coming up!
Went to an entrenpreneurship workshop
The Farmers Guild put on a workshop for beginning farmers about the business aspects of starting a farm. Speakers covered: inspirational farming story, why you should keep careful records, and what kind; business plans; sales; marketing; farm financing options (I mostly spent today reading articles about the fire in Oakland; I know quite a few people whose friends died); and crop planning. We also did a small group exercise in which we did a quick and dirty business plan for an example property. My group’s property had issues: seasonal ditch water on one end of the property, flooding on the other end, and a goodly amount of uneven ground.
There weren’t many opportunities for networking. It was worse in my case, since an old friend had convinced me to go, and we sat next to each other ;). I did talk to a woman who is a Master Gardener in another county. She recommended that I mulch strawberries with rough straw nearly up to the top of the plant, and water way deeper (so that the water goes a foot down). This year we only watered for 15 minutes a day (more on the hottest days or if there were small plants in the ground), but we did do it every day. Last year we watered for an hour every day. We need to set up more zones and water them that way. Another thing to consider in crop planning.
I may have been won over to the growing microgreens camp. I need some high-value crops to grow. But I still need that wash station. We don’t have the money for it, so I think I need to design it and just start, like, buying something every week. I also need add up the costs of different licenses and certifications and start making those happen. And figure out what I will grow in 2017.
No photo today, as I never made it to the garden while the sun was still out. I got home after 5:00. 😦
farmingmum 