On Monday I planted 2 varieties of chard (fordhood giant and perpetual spinach), 2 varieties of cabbage (1 green 1 red), and 1 variety of kale (white russian). Didn’t really add compost at beginning. Ground had been chisel plowed and raked ~2x and Z had put some compost in. I hate having the ground exposed like this. 1st plants may have drowned or gotten too hot from the ground/watering after planting. Have 8 more six-packs of greens seedlings. Will have to use 2nd bed. That stinks, because I have to hoe and rake it before I can plant there! 😦
There is so much debris in this bed! I don’t think it would have gotten digested if we’d waited another week… there are also hard spots where the soil has already dried out too much (or the plow didn’t affect it).
Here’s a strawberry I picked and ate this morning! Z picked a basket from the old berries tonight.
Well, on Saturday I pulled grass around all the blackberries I could find along the northern part of the fence next to our neighbors – and cut out the biggest parts. I put that stuff into the green bin for someone else to compost it. Then Z mowed that area and then I went back and exposed the blackberries again and then yesterday, Z dug them out. I did some raking and hoeing in one of the new beds this weekend and on Sunday we bought seedlings- greens, tomatoes, some peppers iirc, one (!) tomatillo (is that enough for pollination and stuff? gotta look that up), and potatoes. T was excited to help me water the seedlings yesterday. Z put drip tape out in one of the beds this morning.
I did a bit of work in the old strawberries last night, and ate another delicious Chandler 🙂
Wednesday June 8th, 9am-2:30pm
SRJC Shone Farm, Forestville CA
$25 through June 6, $40 after and at door. Includes lunch.
Register: http://ucanr.edu/makecompost
Feasibility, Benefits, Regulations, and Local Resources
Speakers include David Crohn, UC Compost Specialist; Will Bakx of Sonoma Compost; Andrew Logansbill, NRCS Soil Conservatist; Paul Vossen, UC Specialty Crops Farm Advisor for Sonoma & Marin Counties; Leonard Diggs, Shone Farm Manager; Paul Kaiser of Singing Frogs Farm; Paul Bernier, Sonoma County farmer; Josh Beniston, SRJC Sustainable Ag Instructor; Michael Scott, Sonoma County Farmer.
I took Will’s #compost class at the Junior College and I’m interested to hear from him about the state of compost in our county (didn’t go to the event about this the other week). Also very interested in several of the other speakers…
While I was hoeing alongside the Chandlers this morning I talked with the… uncle? of the couple next door who have kids around T’s age. He was mowing the field next to ours because his son has bought the place, had the front house fixed up (I noticed this winter that a dude was there fixing it up all the time and the family had moved into a single-wide trailer), and will be moving in. They have a kid T’s age, and one who’s around 3 years older. He seemed to dismiss the possibility of T and the kid playing together cuz she’s a girl. We’ll see. Though I don’t know about him playing on the roundup-ed swingset, which was installed months ago. Well, I haven’t seen anyone spraying around it in months.
He asked if I wanted him to spray the blackberries that are along the chainlink fence between our 2 properies. I told him that we’ll dig them out. He’s all, “I hate these things.” It doesn’t matter – it’s not your property. I told him that for organic (certification) I’d have to not include anything grown within 50 feet of the fence. I’m sure he doesn’t care and if we don’t deal with it first thing in the morning we’ll have a problem. I should have dealt with it today, but I didn’t get that much time outside tonight and I wanted to work on my hoeing some more. I noticed that the mattock is in the well house with the tools that I use most frequently, so that’s convenient.
After dinner, I got outside to the old strawberries and managed to pick about a half a basket. The sun had pretty much set, so we’ll see what they look like in the morning. I’m not going to deal with them now. I haven’t been eating any all week because Z tends to bring in berries that are mushy. 😦
The beans are emerging nicely. I should find the edamame seeds and pop them in. The raccoons discovered that bed last night:
evidence of digging, most likely by raccoons
If you look closely, you’ll see a lot of bindweed, some cheeseweed mallow, some grass, and maybe a wild radish. I have been waiting to weed until I am more sure if any of the flowers or herbs we planted are going to come up. I have a real problem with recognizing them in the seedling stage, though!
In other beds I’ve also got lots of (curly?) dock, redroot pigweed, still some lambsquarters, that thing that could be wild chamomile, purslaine, that thing that gets really long and woody (no idea what it is), more grass, and maybe some chickweed still. Also a few bristly oxtongue, some prickly lettuce, and another broadleaf weed whose name I always forget.
Another thing I did today was pull at some of the 5-foot-plus grass that’s starting to lean from the garlic bed into the Chandlers. I always get a cut on my hand when I do that, and I’ve got little bits of something embedded in my skin.
I had a really productive evening on Tuesday. I think I did some hoeing, some weeding, and some picking. Maybe I turned the compost or something, too. Yesterday morning I weeded one side of the Chandler strawberries. This morning I cleaned the house because we had someone official coming over.
I got out there tonight. The first thing I noticed was that the corn and beans we planted last week have sprouted! Yay!
Org. Dragon Tongue beans (60 days) (Territorial seeds) packed for 2015 and 1 packet of Painted Mountain OG Dry Corn (85 days) (Johnny’s) for ornamental, dry, or popcorn
I read in the California Master Gardener’s Handbook that I should have taken all the runners off the Chandlers, so I did that. Well, maybe I left a few that looked really good. One plant had wilted leaves and I easily pulled the crown and whole plant out of the ground- hoping it was due to a gopher. I have 2 berries that are just about ripe. One might be too wet on the tip.
dead Chandler strawberry – gophers?
I saw 2 different kinds of toads in that bed. The other one moved too fast to be able to get a picture.
toad on a strawberry leaf. Note discolored spot on another part of the leaf. Looks fungal. I usually just remove leaves that start to look this way.
I also removed more of the runners from the Seascape bed.
Hoping to do more hoeing tomorrow, and more weeding. It is so wet next to the Chandlers that it’s hard to hoe very much. There’s a leak right near where the soil was waterlogged for a while this winter.
Well, I did house and personal business stuff this morning, so I only got outside for like 20 minutes. I raked some more of the soil, compost, and dirt around in one of the new beds. Then I worked on the strawberries for a bit. This evening, I picked some fava and bell beans. Then I raked up 2 wagonloads of grass that Z had weedwhacked (brush cutter blade) and moved it over near the compost. Then I… worked on the strawberries some more. There are starting to be some gaps between plants from my having removed dead and dying leaves, and accidentally pulling out whole strawberry plants in the process.
Our comfrey reappeared! I think we had originally had 2 plants, but I am not sure if the other is still out there. More below.
I would like to have 2-4 perennials at the head of each bed (shorter-term goal). I bought plants last year and that didn’t work out very well – they were too expensive, and too big, and some got eaten by gophers. Including a 4′ long bog sage. I also want to have perennials along the borders of the garden. And a perennial herb bed somewhere in the middle. Oy, what do I need 100 feet of herbs for, though? (selling them. where would I process and dry them?) Mummy needs a greenhouse for starting her own plants.
I got out there this evening and started raking the new beds by hand with one of those hay rake thingies. Z tried raking, then chisel plowed, then raked again last week. There was a lot of grass there – both recently and non-recently cut, as well as grass that was growing. The grass and dirt got left in piles here and there- this happens if you stop or even slow the tractor down too much, so I was trying to spread the stuff out. Oh, and in some spots, he had put out compost, so I’m trying to get a sense of if I should spread more out there.
I didn’t quite finish with that project because Z called to say that he and T were going grocery shopping now that they’d finished with their trip to the park. That gave me around 40 minutes to pick and pull old leaves out of the old strawberries. I managed to pick about 2/3 of a basket – not too bad, considering yesterday’s assessment. Later in the evening, I got outside and filled 2+ 5-gallon buckets with yucky berries, leaves, and grass from the ground near the bed. Sanitation is important, but it should be done more often!
“old” Seascape (left) and Camarosa (right) berries next to a new bed (foreground)The Chandler strawberries. Coming along well!
I spent an hour in the old strawberries tonight and only got a half-dozen berries. Good thing Z picked 4 baskets last night!
I think that all of the currently-ripe and near-ripe berries either have soft spots or are getting moldy. So they all have to come out. Too many are touching the ground, and the rest are sitting on or too close to dead/dying leaves. There were so many slugs out there tonight! Between the Chandlers and the old berries I must have killed around 50 in 2 hours or so. (I did weed a bit in the summer berries, too, but I didn’t see many slugs). Boo, more rain is expected tonight. So that’s about it for strawberries for a few weeks. There’s a lot more work to be done out there. I hope Z can help with pulling out that dead stuff. It seems to be a neverending task.
sow bug on left, slug on right. The whitish berry seems to have been affected by a sucking bug or something.
It’s awful going out there and just pulling out dead stuff and causing death to slugs (and what I think are box elder bugs) for hours!
I’m worried that I probably should have put row cover over the corn to keep it warm and protect it from pests (some are probably in the soil, anyhow). It’s pretty chilly out there.
On Thursday morning I weeded one side of the Chandler strawberry bed, picked a basket of strawberries, and fertilized the old strawberry bed (kelp/fish). In the afternoon, T and I spread some green onion seeds out in the summer strawberries. That evening, T and I planted a packet of Dragon Tongue (Territorial, seeds from last year) and Painted Mountain Corn (Johnny’s). T is really good at using the jab planter that I still can’t quite get to work for me. If I can get him to plant in a line near the drip tape someday, I’ll be happy. If I can get that thing working for me, I’ll also be happy.
I then picked 2 more baskets of strawberries and pulled a bunch of old leaves and stems, rotting berries, and a few growing plants – oops – out of the bed. After that I turned the compost since I hadn’t done that in like a week. It smells so much better than a few weeks ago!
Z used the chisel plow on the 2 new beds yesterday
and he raked them Thursday. I have a lot of work to do by hand, though. He put in a loader load of compost but I’d like to have more in there. We’ll see.
Took pictures of a few bugs that were in the Chandlers:
unidentified larva on a strawberry leaf
that not a ladybug, is it? nah. something else.
unidentified caterpillar on a strawberry leaf. webbing is present. (i think it was wrapped up in the webbing when I found it)
I think I’m finally going to get a copy of Whitney Crenshaw’s book Garden Bugs of North America
Yay, on my way out of the garden today I saw that the beans (Trilogy, iirc) and corn that I planted last week have emerged from the ground. Hoping that some of the flowers we planted will follow suit.
I haven’t gotten that much done in the last several days, aside from picking 2 baskets of strawberries each day! Z mowed a lot of the garden with the tractor, and I did some with the push mower last night. This morning (Tues) I hoed along one side of the Chandlers. The weeds are getting bad in the summer strawberry patch (where a lot of the plants have put out runners to start new plants).
I checked how bad the grass situation along the garlic is today. There are like an average of 6 inches of grass between the path and the garlic. I can’t mow there because the debris would fall into the Chandler (early summer) strawberries. Some of those strawberries have been too far from the drip tape, while others are getting flooded. So annoying. Z picked a basket of berries very quickly. He said he saw a lot of bugs and spiders running around.
Z tried using the landscape rake on the old corn bed tonight, where I’d like to plant some late greens (is that a good idea?). Maybe the bed next to it could be used for pole beans. We’ll see. I think we need to get sprinklers out there because the ground is rock-hard. There’s drip tape peeking out of the ground here and there in the old bed- it was buried by gophers. 😦
farmingmum 