I used to read this. So glossy and stinky but a decent magazine iirc.
I have this link set to open in a new tab, fyi – Permaculture North America
Things are starting to get moving
Today Z did a bunch of mowing on the north side, and a bit on the south side. In a lot of places you can still feel your feet sink a bit so I’m glad he skipped a lot of the south side. He did do the path to the compost – I’ve been planning that as my next wood chip project.
This week I weeded the strawberries and put out more wood chips and turned the compost mess once. The kidlet was sick Thurs-today so I haven’t gotten as much done as I might have. Today I was able to find most of the garlic and onions (including that which was mowed and a few gopher holes). More weeding to come.
Slowly drying out…
We are still drying out after last week’s 7-8 inches of rain. Today I found standing water on the other side of the plot, so I brought 7 or 8 wagonloads of woodchips out. I covered most of the rest of the path through the middle of the garden, out to the wet spots. I didn’t manage to cover them fully as the sun was going down and it was dinner time. Hopefully tomorrow.
The strawberries are really getting there- nearly all of the recently planted crowns are doing fine. The wettest area of the bed is so nearly-dry that you can finally see the trenches that we dug (!).
Meanwhile, the Chandlers are still there but the grass around them is growing faster than I can keep up with. The Chandlers themselves are not growing much.
The garlic is still there, too, at least in part. I found this bug that needs looking up (if I’ve photographed enough details of it). Hoping it is a beneficial predator.
Lots of rain
We got roughly 2.5 inches of rain (as of 10pmish) today. The path into the garden (after the gravel ends; it is pretty low) is flooded at least as badly as it was on Monday and Tuesday before I put 9 wagonloads of compost on it. I can’t imagine what a mess the strawberries must be. Wow, this picture is blurry!
1.5 inches into the day’s rain, the noaa website said that we’ve now gotten 88% of our normal rainfall for this point in the year. What were we at a week ago? 78%? Our total annual rainfall is about 36 inches, but it stops raining by mid-Mayish and the new rainfall year begins on October 1st.
I… must… plan… summer and fall crops…
I think that I will start to get it together in time for planting a lot of fall crops this year. Before then, I’m not so sure.
My garden is too wet!
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.
Kind of glad for the grass in our garden
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.
An article about no-till
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).
Lots more to say about this over time.
Strawberry planting halted by rain
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.
The strawberry planting has begun!
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…
Bad blogger!
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. 😦
farmingmum 