Yesterday afternoon I found out that the temp overnight was going to be 34, or maybe 37. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me to water, and I’m not sure if it would have made a difference to my poor, belated zinnias. I think I will leave the ones that aren’t touching the kale, in case there are butterfly eggs (?) on them. Why, oh why didn’t I pick some yesterday? Because I picked tomatoes and strawberries.
Zinnias that were killed by frost
I also lost my basil. I did pick a little bit of it yesterday. And tomatillos.
Today I did some hoeing in preparation for planting garlic. And I watered for like half an hour this evening, as I picked a couple of gallons of tomatoes, a few peas (the snow peas don’t seem to like frost, hm), some stock flowers, and a few marigolds.
Oops, never got new rain gear. Rain imminent. Paths to mulch with 3 bales of straw I bought today. I did put compost on the paths around the “new” strawberries and in some of the bare spots in the bed and on paths that I walked on between that bed and the pile of compost. Wish I had an effective way to quickly seed the cover crop beds (oh, wait, we do have that seeder)… no time…
The air quality is, at least on paper, getting better. It rained .2 inches on Thursday night! Note dark-colored soil due to the presence of moisture in the photo below. The air is definitely worse in other parts of town (like 6 blocks from the Coffey Park neighborhood on Friday, and when I visited Bennett Valley on Weds it was really bad). I got out to the garden on Friday morning and picked a basket of strawberries. A lot of the “eat today” berries did not take well to being quintuple-washed. 😦
In the evening I started a new compost pile. I only used 4 or 5 buckets of stuff because I sprained my thumb (tho now it feels like the whole wrist) taking off my backpack the other day. SIGH! I’ve really overdone it the last few days, but, you know, vacuuming has to happen, especially after all the smoke in the last week and a half.
On Saturday I am planning on going to an orientation training thing to be part of a study about the effects of fire on produce! Yay! The woman was like, wow, you were really close to the fires. (3.1 miles by our count) I hope that some of the farmers who lost everything in the actual fires have gotten in touch with her!
Well, I have cabbage seedlings that are getting big, and broccoli seedlings that i’ve potted up (some have been rotting in their new pots 😦 ) and this stuff needs to get into the ground. Z prepped the area with the tractor, and today i put out enough oyster shell and compost to get me started (the right row is pretty much ready to receive seedlings).
new greens beds. cabbage and broccoli scheduled for the right, and kale and broccoli in the left rows
I should have watermelons soon if they can handle the 48-degree nights.
Hm, the bad Inaturalist code at the right is worrisome; no time tonight.
PS, I planted some snow peas last week and they have emerged!
Oy, I’m so far behind. We got some rain in the last 2 weeks, so grass and weeds are happy. Check out this canary grass that was in the garden.
canary grass. seems to be a species that indicates the presence of water. It was next to a spigot. This stuff can get to be like 7′ tall.
It’s not the first and others have dropped seed :(. I cut the seedheads off of this one and brought it and a bunch of weeds from the fenceline that we share with the neighbors to the municipal compost bin last night. I spent a couple of hours mowing during mid-day, and I finished right when my neighborhood’s temperature peaked at 101. It hardly ever gets quite that hot here. The garden has been doing pretty okay with this heat wave, partly because I’ve been handwatering recent seedings and transplants.
I’ve been spending 1-2 hours in the garden each day, usually in the evening, which puts a lot of domestic pressure on my husband. It’s so weird that I call him my husband now, because I fully intended to always call him my partner. Things are a bit more conservative here in Sonoma County, as compared to where we got married – in Oakland. Anyhow, he doesn’t really have any time or energy for the garden these days. This is frustrating, since taking down last fall’s pea trellis has been a lengthy process for me (sickled and cut grass back from the trellis a week or two ago, and today I pulled the stakes out, but the trellis is twist-tied on at the base, and some of the trellis past the last stake is really stuck in the grass). I need this trellis for this spring’s peas!!!
Crappy photo taken at sunset of the part of the strawberry bed where I’ve been pulling dead leaves, runners, and fruit off and killing whatever slugs I can. Note red strawberry on plant on left. Some of them have cold damage, which I think is because I’ve pulled the weeds back a few inches from the strawberry plants and made room for cold air to enter and hang out in the bed.
Over the last 3-4 days I have spent (at least) 5.5 hours on pulling off dead/dying leaves and fruit and killing slugs and other bugs in the Seascape/Sweet Ann (2016) strawberry bed. I’m almost halfway down the bed. I really did not clean up the bed at the end of last year.
Also, I mowed 1.5 hours yesterday (around most strawberry beds, where new greens should be, around field edges, and a bit more of the mound that goes along the neighbors’ fence, which I spent about 2 hours on on Thurs or Fri). Mowing the mound last week was slow going because the plants were so tall and the bunch grasses were so thick and damp at their bases that the mower kept stalling. I want to plant perennials for foliage and filler up there. It’s over 200 feet (probably more like 280) and is over 6′ wide in some spots. The previous owner reportedly tried to plant bushes there, but they didn’t do well. The grass is always very happy there, and the curly dock, too.
Seedlings in greenhouse are doing well (no sign of lemon balm, only 1 onion germinated, not sure about the larkspur or the lavender or rosemary). The greens are ready to transplant. I guess I need to get some 4″ pots or something
Some rain is predicted for Monday and Tuesday. We have already received 60.05 inches of rain since October 1st. Our average annual rainfall is 36.28, so this is pretty catastrophic. Be glad you can’t smell my neighbors’ septic system, the vapors from which get blown into my garden. I have multiple chemical sensitivity, so the combination of their personal, laundry, and dish products (along with poop) really kicks my butt.
Meanwhile, there’s a gathering of an agricultural organization that I’ve paid to be a member of on Monday. It starts before my husband should be home from work (hopefully he can leave early), and my child, who I was hoping to bring with me, has a cough.
We could get as much as an inch of rain on Friday and Saturday?! According to NOAA, on average we get 4 more inches in a rain year (which ends October 1st). We have already had 55.5 inches instead of the average 36. We’ve had enough. Please stop.
I realized that if I were to put a hoophouse over some garden beds so I could have dry beds in the spring, I’d have to dig some serious trenches to redirect water that would fall off the roof… that would almost be better for our 2nd garden, which is in a field that we can’t see from the house, and it’s a pretty wet walk to get out there in winter!
farmingmum 