Today I put a bunch of woodchips just past the entrance to the garden and partway down the path between the north and south sides because there was standing water (and/or uncovered ground). I got out to the strawberries for a few minutes this morning and tried to cover up the roots that were sticking up under some of the crowns – we’ll see if that worked. It was raining on me as I worked and I tried to take pictures of the raindrops hitting the puddle down at the end of the bed. This photo is from late in the afternoon. I think the puddle looks smaller. More rain to come. Hopefully over the years we’ll get the soil to the point where this no longer happens.
On a day like today, when we just had a shower that produced the heaviest rain I’ve seen in nearly 3 years on this property, I’m glad that we have grass covering almost our entire garden. We’ve had 3.5+ inches of rain in the last three days or so, after hardly any rain in over a month, so that’s a lot of moisture for our soil to contend with.
The vineyard down the street was draining quickly this morning, but there was still pooled water in-between all of their rows this morning. I didn’t check this morning, and the ground was definitely spongy before this last inch of rain (last 24 hours), but I’m sure we’re in better shape than that!
The strawberries I planted definitely do need to have more soil hilled up around them, though. Some of the roots were exposed yesterday and I focused on weeding elsewhere. I could have lost many plants that way (or I could get a lot of disease), but I do have roughly 30 more crowns in the fridge. I wonder how long it will take for the soil to dry out enough for me to plant them. This series of storms was predicted to drop 6 inches of rain over 10 days, and we are more than halfway there.
I just read this article: Why We Don’t Till or Dig Here. Aside from the editing, the description of what they do sounds like it was taken from notes from a speech by Paul Kaiser of Singing Frogs Farm in Sebastopol. That farm is around 15 miles from where we are and we see them at local farmers’ markets. I’ve also toured it with a class and done a trial workday there (oddly, that was the same week as I moved out of the neighborhood, so I never called to follow up on working there, lol/cry. plus I got busy with our enterpise project at school). About Singing Frogs Farm’s Farming Model (no-till, heavy compost).
We had about .20 inch of rain today. I got 15 strawberry crowns into the ground (by extending the bed to the drier north rather than continuing in the already-prepped south) today to bring the planting to a total of 70ish. The forecast as of a few days ago was for 6 inches of rain in 10 days. So that might be it for planting strawberries – we’ll see.
The planting I did this evening was in the tiny dark area at the top of the garden bed. In the other photo you can see that we’ve been doing some mowing.
I think I saw a millipede, a centipede, and a harlequin bug today. Plus countless slugs.
I planted 17 Seascape strawberries today! T helped with the first 8. He even threw one of my heavy trowels at/to me and it hit my hand. That sure hurt. I had Z help him get some (mostly older) bunching onion, chamomile, borage, and something else seeds. He really prefers seeds to transplants, especially since I am not about to let him hold these toxic and precious strawberry crowns!
The last few probably took a bit longer, since I had to get more weeds out. Tomorrow I will have to clear more planting space. I lost my (medium?) file that I use for sharpening the hoe. It’s so annoying to need to sharpen every few feet. I need a setup for using a more appropriate sharpening method such as the angle grinder. I think I’d need a vise for that, and a clear workbench. I don’t think we have either…
Hoping to get all 100 planted before it is expected to rain later in the week. In the meantime, I’m using a little watering can…
I think of something to write here every day, but things have been so busy.
Last weekend I went to a farm conference of sorts. One of the workshops I went to was basically a data-collecting tool for a nonprofit. Another was a nice history of something about how tomato harvesters put a lot of people out of work and caused some problems with US immigration policy. Another workshop was about ag-related activism on the local and state level — dealing with government officials. I went into that one really late because I had gone on an awesome hike. I used to hike there about 3 times a week when I was in school, so I had been itching to get out into that forest by myself for a long time.
Anyhow, the descriptions of the workshops didn’t necessarily match the workshop titles listed on the schedule, and then the descriptions hadn’t prepared folks for how the workshops would be run.
Really people need more opportunities to interact. Weed Dating near the end of the day (I have a photo to add later) and waiting in line for lunch (I got the veggie dish, which was low on protein) were the best times to talk to folks.
Meanwhile, back on the farm… weeding. And then late this week I started prepping to plant those strawberries. I have space cleared for 25 to be planted ASAP.
I had wanted to do some fertilizing and stuff this week, but my kid was sick Th-Fr so he stayed home from school. And was clingy most evenings.
My dude did some mowing today. And he drove some compost into the garden so I’d have it a bit closer to where I need to use it. Sadly the road into the garden now has tire tracks from the tractor== north end of the garden is too wet to drive on. 😦
my view as i approached the (purchased) compost pile this morning
Today in anticipation of the rain I brought 5 or so wagonloads of compost out to the garden and spread it on soil that was bald/degrading. Some of the soil is cracked and dry, other soil is cracked but looks like it is growing some kind of moss or something. There are some new gopher mounds, since the gophers have really gotten going in the last 3 weeks and there seem to be a lot of gophers. Thanks a lot, cats, occasional hawks, foxes, owls, etc. Last night we spread bell bean seed in some bald areas in the “wheat” bed and in the bed that includes tillage radish (organic matter maximizer, was it?). I also dropped some fava bean seeds to the east of the east row of brassicas (there is a red cabbage that looked perfect yesterday and just past its prime today) and to the west of the old strawberries.
I have to check the strawberry plantings very closely because they are all producing buds or even flowers (!). I have pretty much decided to leave them on the old strawberries since there are so many, but it means that if we have a frost, that fruit will likely not make it.
if you look closely you will see a pretty strawberry flower
On Monday I started to clear the old brown and red leaves out of last year’s June-bearing (iirc) strawberries. You can really see the difference, but the ground underneath looks so impermeable. I wish I had time to finish that job and put compost (and maybe spray some fish/kelp stuff) around each plant.
I caught up on weeding the newer strawberries, garlic, and onions over last weekend, and started a new compost pile on Sunday (added in the remains of the previous compost, since there was still a lot of straw in there).
Z fixed the major irrigation break from the last time I mowed in the garden, and we keep discussing how we need to pull out all of the old drip tape. I found this mess today – either we had 4 lines in that bed, or there were 3 and one line was replaced but the old one hadn’t been removed.
4 pieces of drip tape stuck in horizontal holes in the old corn/beans/okra bed
The new strawberry clones (Seascapes) that I ordered have arrived! They were a bit dry in their open ziplock bags- I hope they will be ok. Parts of the bed were just about ready to be planted in before today’s rain 😦
I just ordered some strawberry crowns (and seeds, of course!). Hopefully they will come before the rain this next week. Or the rain the next week after that. Hopefully the ground will warm up and dry up enough so I’m not destroying the soil in my attempts at planting. Yay!
I was going to mow this morning, but the grass was way too wet. That gave me an opportunity to work on weeding the garlic and onions. I hadn’t gotten very far on Saturday, and of course my work from last week needed to be redone by today!
Unfortunately, I ran over an irrigation mainline and since the mower was on low and there wasn’t (much?) water in the poly pipe, it got cut pretty badly.
north side of the field pre-weeding and -mowing. there should be alliums on the right and strawberries on the left
showing where the pipe got cut
summer strawberries, post-mowing
alliums (left?) and strawberries (right?) after some weeding and mowing
The mower is going in for servicing in the morning. Good thing, since there was small wire wrapped around the base of the blade, and I hit the pipe today, and I carried a stake from one of the sprinklers for quite a ways. I just wanted to make sure to be able to see where my strawberries are and where the summer ones will go. Should I hand-weed the rest of the bed that has the straw at the end so I can put strawberries in later in the month?
We had my kid’s birthday party at our place today. It was a beautiful 69 degree (F) day. There were about 8 kids present, and we pretty much had our version of a smashing success :). Two brothers played in our yard (I had mowed the grass really short on Thursday) most of the time – Grey Kitty loved the attention that they gave her. I loved seeing the yard get used. I need to get more outdoor toys for my kid “fer sure.”
I eventually showed people around the garden. It’s pretty sad right now – everything except the kales is bolting in the greens beds (this means that there are flowers to see, I guess), the strawberries are nearly invisible in the weeds, and there was hardly any sign that we are actually growing garlic and onions. I heard a mom exclaiming to her daughter when she spotted a ladybug. That kind of thing makes me want to have people over all the time! I did get out there later and weed the onions a bit and kill a bunch of slugs :). I hate how so much of my work in the garden involves killing. There are so many slugs out there. So. Many.
The ground is still so wet that I am having trouble envisioning planting anything. I feel so bad to be disturbing it by pulling out weeds, and I feel bad to be leaving the ground bare- hopefully that’s helping it to dry out.
one of the kids at the party enjoying running around
farmingmum 