I just watched what I think was a swallowtail butterfly wandering around the garden looking for something it liked. All that’s flowering in there is strawberries, bindweed, maybe some lambsquarters, maybe a tomato, and a couple of purple green beans. 😦 I have a really hard time getting small-seeded plants, esp. flowers, to germinate. It’s odd that I just last night wrote about needing to plant more flowers. I guess it’s not that odd.
I do have yarrow and calendula that I planted. There are so many other places where I’ve tried to plant either annuals or wilflower mixes, and I guess the soil wasn’t prepared the way they like it, the water wasn’t right, or it wasn’t the correct time of year. I meant to put some dill in  with the greens last week, but it didn’t happen. Maybe this weekend.
Today I listened to a Permaculture Voices “Creative Destruction” series episode called “Two Fathers Talking Unschooling, Raising Kids, and Life with Author Ben Hewitt” (CD10). I didn’t find a link when I looked real quickly just now, but there probably is one. It was a great episode. (I listen to it on Soundcloud)
It reminded me of a conversation I had at my weekly visit to the gym the other night, with a woman who’s a 2nd grade bilingual ed teacher. She told me about all the difficult kids in her class- the defiant ones, the ones who can’t sit down, etc. I was like, “those kids need a different model.” I wonder if that 66 year-old teacher who’s nearing retirement even gave that statement of mine any consideration.
I sometimes think about my education and how something different might have produced a more independent, self-starting person. (When I was in the early years of elementary school, I got B’s, perhaps because I wasn’t challenged enough, or because the classroom environment wasn’t quite right for me). I did great while I was in high school and keeping busy with sports, clubs, and work (and of course, lots of TV, music, and books), but once I got to the nearly totally unstructured university life, and especially once I quit sportsing, I was totally lost. I only stayed with it because the full-tuition scholarship did not allow for taking any time off. When I started at the junior college in 2010, I was much more focused. Perhaps this was partly because I knew what I wanted to do with what I was learning. It was also because I was able to nearly completely focus my life on school. During the 1st 8 months, though, I was living in an intentional community. There was structure/an outlet in terms of community meals, meetings, and work days. After that, I had a commuter room. I really did my 40 hours during the workweek and then went home to Z in Berkeley on the weekends. I’m so grateful that I didn’t _have_ to work during that period. I did a few brief jobs, but sometimes I don’t do very well working for other people. I’m temporally-challenged, for one thing. Speaking of that, I need to get to bed.
On Thursday evening I planted more corn and green, yellow, and purple green beans. I snuck a few more Blacktail Mountain watermelon seeds in, too. I don’t have a lot of luck with this method. I also tried to fill in some of the spots where I had poor germination (eaten seed?) in the last planting. That was 2 weeks ago, oops.
This morning (Friday, a day that peaked around 93 or 94 degrees) I tried to smooth out the west-most beds. The soil is so sandy there! There is still a lot of grass, which I wish weren’t a problem. Then I prepped some more ground for potatoes. I only went about 12 feet because there’s no drip tape past where we’ve already planted, so the soil is really dry in the top several inches. Then I forget if I did something else (maybe checked the Chandlers?) but I went and picked some old strawberries. I put Camarosas in one basket and Seascapes in the other, but I don’t quite know which is which.
This evening T and I planted sunflower seeds! I had a big bag of mixed sunflowers, and a packet of old Mammoth sunflowers (packed for 2014) and another packet of a big sunflower. I tried to put the big ones in the middle of the bed just in case they can block some light from hitting the house, which is on the other side of the garden. I want to cover that bed with compost but I am a bit concerned that we only have 4 or 5 yards left. There are way different bugs in that bed than I’ve seen anywhere else in the garden. We’ll see if they just eat the seeds, or what. I also worry that I could have planted the seeds too deep.
To do: hoe the greens, add all those buckets of stuff I’ve got to the existing compost pile – it will be much bigger that way, pick strawberries, plant dry beans, plant flowers, plant cover crops (Z needs to prepare a lot of beds for this), plant pole beans, plant the other sunflower bed, go to herb fair and get some perennials to plant…where?
Z has pretty much mowed the whole back area with the tractor. He moved the tractor and mower back under cover tonight because he’s noticing new rust. A few mornings ago the fog was down to the ground, so I’m guessing that that’s why. That was the day I had all this weird wilting on the Chandlers (did I write about that?).
Yay, the potatoes that Z planted last week are sending out some leaves! We still haven’t finished planting them all, but what are ya gonna do?
Things are growing!
Tonight I did finish transplanting the tomatoes, the peppers, and most of the purple basil. It made me feel so productive! I also transplanted a nasturtium T started at school (though when he brought it home it was unclear if there were actually any seeds in it, so I had put in a few old nasturtium seeds that I had, lol) into the broccoli bed. The weeds over there have really taken off this week. I’ve got to get in there with some serious tools. The little hoe I used last week didn’t do such a great job on the larger weeds that were in the corn and beans.
I picked almost 2 baskets of old strawberries tonight. They look pretty good! I ate some of the slightly-soft ones as I was picking and they tasted ok. I have been trying to check the Chandlers twice a day because they have been getting these big bite marks on them. I would almost think it’s a gopher, but it could also be ravens.
Here’s one of our beds of greens from this morning. The chard is in the other bed, and it’s getting quite big. The collard plant that grew back in the eastern greens bed from last winter is also doing quite well. I looked for collards at the farm supply store this weekend and either there weren’t any or they looked terrible. I forget which!
Today Z went back to the farm supply store because we realized that I’d been charged for 10 six-packs instead of 2. There was a long line the first time he went, and then the 2nd time he and the manager had some trouble communicating. The guy printed out the long version of the receipt so he could see the longer descriptions of things that had been confusing (I think it said 4-pack for the 4″ pots or something). Z wasn’t sure about things, so he left without money. He got chided for us not checking the receipt (hello, toddler!) and for not putting it on our account to get the discount. I thought I had told the woman our account name, but oh, well. So now I have to try to find the time to drive out there and deal with this… good thing we’re not relying on the farm and my 2 hours a day in the field for money!
This morning, Z and T planted some potatoes while I worked on the old strawberries. I picked a basket and also pulled out half of a 5-gallon bucket of junk. So now I have 5 buckets of old leaves and strawberries, and 1 or 2 buckets of kitchen scraps (including lots more strawberries and their cuttings that came off so I could freeze them) to add to the compost pile. I’ll consider it a new start. The compost pile I started 10 days ago is still warmer than my hands, so that’s good, but it’s pretty small! There’s also a problem with the inconsistent particle size (things like squash rinds, broccoli stems, etc can really mess up the cohesion that’s needed to maintain the heat of the whole pile).
We went to the farm supply store today (tho it really is more of a garden-scale store) and got more seedlings, more seeds, 5 or 6 tomato cages, some more fertilizers, those arm-protectors that will be helpful with the blackberries that are coming in a month or so, and another hat, since we have to buy the XL ones when we find them. All three of us have huge heads. I need to look at my receipt, because that doesn’t sound like $200 worth of stuff.
The seedlings were the “end of the long weekend” leftovers. Some were pretty rootbound. I watered my plants before I brought them into the store to pay for them, since several (especially the Sweetwater ones in the round pots) were pretty dry. Tonight I planted 7 tomatoes, 2 tomatillos, and about 5 teeny tiny basils. The tomatoes I transplanted yesterday, especially my Sungold cherry tomatoes, look so yellow! (they are at the top right in the bed in this picture). I am worried that my tomatoes might be too close to my Sweet Ann and Seascape strawberries. Only time will tell. The strawberries don’t look so great- lots of tiny red spots on the leaves. I will have to look that up sometime, huh?
2016 tomato bed (#1?). Photo taken before I put some tiny basil seedlings in-between some of the tomatoes
Is it bad that I am planning on putting the peppers that I bought into the tomato bed? I sure hope not.
The garden is really, really coming along now! Z did some more plowing and raking. The tomato bed looks almost perfect. Several other beds are as ready as they are going to get (sunflowers, possible pole beans, or some cover crops), and I was trying to straighten out the potato bed this morning. We put in irrigation for the other beds this morning and afternoon. It was rough since there was a toddler in the garden who only wanted to breastfeed. I think he wasn’t feeling well today. I was reminded of why I am always happy to do just about everything except irrigation- putting some of that stuff together really hurts my hands! And I hate how things tend to pop off. But anyhow, we’ve got some drip and, for now, some sprinklers.
me and T in the garden. You can see that my shirt is pulled up a bit from breastfeeding.
This evening I planted our 6 tomato plants (2 cherry, 4 others- gotta have those Sungolds!). I’m hoping to get more plants on Monday. It’ll be a holiday, but the farm supply store is open for 5 hours – I checked! I’d like to get the potatoes in, too, but we didn’t prep them for planting at all (didn’t cut them and let them dry). I’d also like to get some smaller-seeded crops planted to keep the greens, potatoes, and tomatoes company. Dill, basil, carrots – that sort of thing.
grey kitty catches some shade under our wagon. T’s feet are visible nearby, and it’s clear that she’s looking up at him. Moments later he grabbed her roughly.
I didn’t get around to picking strawberries. I did pull a couple of perfect-looking ones out at the end of the night and they were squishy. 😦 I’ve got to go cut some up for freezing before bed!
I had to check what I wrote in my last post, since it’s been a while!
I did a bit of digging and probably doubled the length of Z’s potato bed, but never got around to putting in a longer line of drip tape and planting. I was going to work on digging this morning, but then Z pointed out that mowing would be a good idea. I think I cut more than half of the grass in the garden bed area. While I was out there, I realized that the winter greens could go in the northwest 1/8th of the garden. So we should get cover crops in there soon. I also mowed where we want to put tomatoes, and alongside the newer strawberry beds 🙂
Z did some chisel plowing this afternoon. Even after 2 or 3 passes, the beds still need a lot of work. Like rototilling work. There are humongous clods and there’s no actual bed to plant in :(. I wish we could leave it this way. Maybe for some cover crops, but not for flowers or veggies! Hopefully we can get the potato situation dealt with and get water onto some of these beds so we can plant stuff. This is a holiday weekend, so by Sunday or Monday there probably won’t be many good seedlings left at the stores. Maybe this gives me a few days to get things ready before buying more plants (?). I also don’t have a potassium-rich fertilizer for pre-planting (for the tomatoes and ‘taters).
a garden bed that has been chisel plowed. Note the huge clods of dirt. I think maybe this bed could be for pole beans
On Friday I did some fertilizing (with Biomin Booster 153). The older corn and beans had been looking pretty stressed. I guess I put kind of a lot on the strawberries (though I ran out about 80% of the way thru the old strawberries, oops). The summer berries had been looking stressed.
I spent so much time this week pulling strawberry runners! I swear that you can pull a couple off a plant and then 2 plants later you can look back and the 1st plant has more runners. The summer plants look like they are slowing down their runner production. I kept too many of them, but I guess I can thin later. Those are probably famous last words that led me last year to have a bed that looks like this:
Old strawberry bed. The green grass in the background has already dried out and was mowed on Saturday
I think my newer plantings of strawberries’ roots are too shallow. It’s pretty easy to pull a whole (what do you call it?) section of a plant off when I’m just trying to break a runner off near the plant. I should be using one of those little pairs of scissors that people use for trimming herb, shouldn’t I? I actually do have such a pair, but it’s in a hard-to-get-to place in the house.
The latest planting of beans and corn has emerged. It’s past time to plant more!
corn and beans seedlings. Note end of grey kitty’s tail in front left
It’s amazing how much the weeds can differ from one bed to another. There is so much pigweed around the corn and beans. Thankfully I haven’t seen much in the strawberries. Bindweed is terrible everywhere. Â There is some bermudagrass at the end of the bean bed. I have been pulling it out and putting it on a gopher mound to make it visible so I could put it into the green waste bin. I think I forgot to do that and mowed it this morning. D’oh!
Most of the greens that I planted last week are still there, but haven’t grown much – except for the Fordhook Giant chard! I think Z ran over some greens with the tractor tires – we’ve been trying to get the potato bed to go in-between the greens.
It’s hard to explain just how dry the soil is out there. After I mowed today, I went out with a rake and tried to cover a lot of the bare soil (from old and new gopher activity) with some of the cut grass.
And not a moment too soon, since there’s some doubt about kale, broccoli, and maybe even cabbage being transplanted this late in the spring. I did 4 6-packs, which took up maybe 80 feet (times 2) of the bed. I got about 15 plants per flat, since many had up to 3 seedlings in them. We’ll see how they do. T helped me – I don’t know why I showed him the thing about crunching the bottom of the cell to get the roots to loosen up before you take the plants out. He emptied 3 cells and sort of stuck the plants sideways into the ground. Very cute.
I haven’t been spending much time in the old strawberries, but the areas that I visit frequently look pretty good. I’ve been eating berries right out of the patch, but not picking very many since I’m not spending the time…
I managed to hoe one side of the corn and beans this morning :).
Now I have to figure out what to do about Z’s potato planting project. The ground there is really hard and dry, and I am not going to use a pickaxe. We had talked about planting tomatoes in the bed that still has the trellis T-posts set up from last fall, but I am worried that pests could be hiding at the weedy bases of the posts… we could try to get the tomatoes in with the potatoes, if there’s space. But the potatoes have likely not been getting enough water…
Yesterday morning I fertilized everything except the old strawberries. In the evening I started a new compost pile and picked up 2 buckets’ worth of strawberry waste. Then I worked on the old strawberries and picked up another half a bucket of junk! Ugh!
On Saturday I didn’t get out there to do anything besides water seedlings until the evening. Z had a productive day- he mowed the yard and a lot of the garden, including the area around the compost. I planted 2 six-packs of seedlings – white russian kale and another dino kale (did 1 or 2 the other day). So now that bed is full! I will try to get the other bed covered with more compost and hoed/weeded a bit more tomorrow and get another 2-4 packs of seedlings in. I would like to be able to use our transplanter from Johnny’s, but the ground is mostly too hard or too wet. My hands are killing me!
At the end of the night I checked on the Chandlers. There are like 3 gopher mounds in different parts of that bed! 😦 The runners really do seem to grow right back. I wonder if the plants are extra-stressed because of our cooler nights. The corn and beans look terrible by the end of the day and seem to perk up in the late morning. Hm.
There seems to be less garlic in the allium bed today than two days ago. Another “Hm.” There’s no sign of soil disturbance, but it’s rough enough that the gophers could have just sucked it under. We have a really hard time with garlic and gophers. And grass – need to mulch better from the start.
view of the hill and the northeast corner of the garden. You can hardly see the remains of the pile of purchased compost behind the fence.blurry photo from around sunset tonight. it shows the new bed of chard, cabbage, and kaleÂ
I started transplanting the cabbage, chard, kale (and, to come, broccoli) seedlings on Monday or Tuesday. I had to take a break for a few days because it got so hot out (93 degrees, I think). I put compost out over a lot of the 2 beds I’m using because I just couldn’t stand seeing all that bare soil. Dust sometimes comes up when I walk on the paths. That’s soil erosion right there. Still considering trying out some landscape fabric and/or burlap for the paths. Just need Z to stop at our local farm supply store on the way home from work.
Z got excited about getting the potatoes we bought into the ground. It’s probably too late, and the potatoes are somewhat overgrown already, but hey, we bought them, so we have to use them. I suggested putting them between the two greens beds, since there’s so much space between them. He got started today, opening the ground with the mattock and planting like 20 feet of potatoes!
Today I planted 8 or 10 feet of Trilogy bush beans and Ashworth OP yellow corn (from Fedco). Both are organic, of course ;). I also transplanted 2 6-packs of dino kale. This morning, I didn’t have much time out there because I’d had a doctor’s appointment. I weeded and pulled  yet more runners off of the Chandler strawberries, and found 4 slugs. Yay for getting those out of the way. I saw a box elder bug today, I forget which bed it was in (not the old berries, though). At the end of the night I pulled runners out of the summer strawberries. It’s crazy in that bed!!
the north end of the summer strawberry row. too many runners! and the weeds are/were encroaching on the bed
I’m hoping to get a new compost pile started in the next few days. I haven’t had any empty buckets for some time, and there is (or was, before the current wind storm, which seems to have broken the outdoor table in our yard!) so much debris on the ground next to the old strawberries. Probably 3 5 gallon buckets’ worth. I picked and ate a half a dozen strawberries this evening. We’ve still been getting less than a basket per night.
Someday I’d like to learn about windspeed. I grew up in a place that had hurricanes and strong winds during winter storms, and I have to say that this is not a mere 21 mile per hour wind.
farmingmum 