One-handed gardening

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I thought I’d chipped a bone in a finger on Thursday night, but by Friday afternoon it became clear that my wrist got sprained when I recoiled from the thing that hit my finger (just a bruise, no break). I’ve had to take it a bit easier this weekend.

Last night I picked 2 baskets of strawberries, and I picked another this morning. I also did some weeding in the greens, as usual. Then, since I had some time to myself while T and Z were at the park, I organized my seeds a bit- I had 2 boxes that hadn’t been added to my seed storage. I picked out seeds I’d like to get planted asap (peas, carrot, radish).

20150926_somefallseedstoplantSeeds in container

This evening I planted 2 10-foot rows of shelling peas!!! T took the bucket from me, dumped out the peas, and put a bunch of dirt and gravel in so he could make “soup.” Took me about 2 hours to weed and plant those peas :/. Need to get better at using the seeder tool we have.

Z mowed the old cover crops, unleashing several clouds of dust as he ran over mounds of soil that had been  left by the gophers. He also picked a bucket of ears of corn. The kernels ranged from still-whitish yellow to purplish. There is a ton of corn earworm damage! Half of many ears have been eaten. The corn will still be yummy, though!

Wind erosion
Wind erosion

And I learned how to add tags to posts here 🙂

At least I fertilized!

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Raccoon heading towards fence in garden
Raccoon sneaking out of the garden…

I didn’t hit all the areas I wanted to apply Biomin 153 to last week, so I felt it was important to get out there with the fish/kelp mix today. Last week I ran out of time to clean out the sprayer, and I paid for that this week. I started to spray and a little bit came out nicely, and then stopped. I’ve twirled knobs and pressed levers, and I can’t get it to work! So I ended up pouring like 3/4 gallons at a time into a bucket (with a handle) and using it to apply the stuff. I refilled with some water here and there, and I think I still only got to 1 side of the okra.

Need to get on the corn-harvesting thing. And pick strawberries. And beans. And plant things!!! I also need to mow the old cover crops so we can get ready to plant strawberries and stuff in them.

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Sorghum-sudangrass

Some of the sorghum-sudangrass is heading out, so that’s interesting. We’re wondering if either our mowers can handle the sections that are 5 feet tall… Also, those spots tend to correspond with leaks in the drip system.

We found one whole row that has sunn hemp in it. I scattered it along with other seeds in some of the other beds, but it definitely was not able to compete with those other cover crops.

There's definitely pigweed mixed in with that sunn hemp!
There’s definitely pigweed mixed in with that sunn hemp!

This is sunn hemp, right?

“Mummy!”

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He had found the golf ball that our friend who was cleaning out her storage gave to us earlier this summer, and he was content to sit in the wagon (after a brief tour of the garden) and roll the ball around. I picked some snap peas and brought them to him, then snuck away to pull weeds in the newer planting that’s a bit further down the bed. Then it started: “Mummy! Mummiah!” Argh! I would go over there and he’d show me something he could do with the ball, or he’d demand more peas. Then I’d head back down the row and it would start all over again… I got the grass along the drip tape pulled on one of the two rows, so that’s something…

I was going to mow, but…

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I was given something of a “personal morning” and finally made it outside at 11:00. I brought the push mower (http://www.billygoat.com/Product-Categories/Detail/high-weed-mower-residential-commercial) out and walked along the lines of sprinklers to try to make a visible path so I wouldn’t bump into the sprinklers or their poles. I had two sets of two beds to do (see https://farmingmum.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/20150920_104052.jpg?w=300) – one had been mowed before and not watered much after – I think it had been mostly buckwheat, and I think one part is going to be a Junebearing strawberry bed. As I got near the end of a bed of super-green sorghum-sudangrass, I started pulling out tall, mature pigweed plants. Somehow I lost my protective eye wear and I can’t find it again. That area is too wet to mow, anyhow, but I need to find those goggles.

I decided to mow the drier area without the eye wear, and started up the mower with some difficulty. I couldn’t really get it to run at full volume, but finally I let it start mowing. It promptly sputtered to a stop, and I remembered that some drip tape had gotten wrapped up in it at the end of my last mowing. Doh! This time, it actually had spit out two good-sized pieces of tape (the smaller was like 15 inches)!  I was like, I’m not turning over a mower with a full tank of gas in the garden to pull this thing out, so I put it away. I certainly wasn’t going to try later on in a 100 degree day, especially since a slight breeze was starting up and it’s fire season.

So I hoed 3/4 of the unplanted area of the pea bed, in hopes that I’d get back out there this evening to finish hoeing and plant (I didn’t). We ran errands in the afternoon, and I was told to go to the gym (this would guarantee that I’d get a shower). I got home about 15 minutes before dark. Sigh!

Not the most productive day- strawberry crowns needed!

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Today I didn’t get out to the garden until 6:00. The new greens seemed to be pretty much ok after the raccoon family’s visit – there were small digging marks near some plants, but mostly on the other side of the drip tape from where I’d put the seedlings last night.

I picked strawberries, pulled out dead leaves, and killed tons of slugs and about 3 cucumber beetles.  I got less than a basket from 3/4 of our berry planting :(. The end of the season is coming quickly. We’d get a lot if we picked every three days and there weren’t so many bad ones! I usually throw the really bad ones on the ground and pick them up afterwards so they’re not just sitting out there like free food for rodents, but I didn’t get time to do that. T and Z returned with takeout right at sunset.

I picked green beans from our 2nd to last pole bean planting. We missed a bunch earlier in the week that are now really big.

I’m trying to find strawberry crowns that I can plant this month. People always recommend Chandler as a Junebearing variety. I’m having some trouble finding it (some do say to plant it in August, maybe that’s why?). A lot of places have early-season varieties that are good for planting zones 5-8, but we are “9b.” Sunset calls us zone 14, iirc, so I get really confused and can never remember our zone. But like, could I get away with planting a really early variety? Maybe if I can get just 25 of them, I could try. I got ahold of a commercial nursery that said to call back in 2 weeks, and they recommended just one of their varieties for our zone. They sell in lots of 1500 so I’d have to find some folks to go in on them with me… Last year I tried to get in on 2 different orders and none of them came thru for me (“we got shorted on our order”). So we’ll see!

These guys had better not mess with my newly-transplanted greens!

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M2E1L0-2R350B300
skunk
M2E1L0-2R350B300
raccoon
skunk sneaking around
skunk sneaking around

We have a motion-sensitive camera in the garden because we needed to find out what was doing so much digging out there. At first, all we got was raccoons- I was surprised because I really thought it had been skunks. We got some motion-sensitive lights, hoping that they’d bother the animals enough to stay away. Nope!

Then, 2 weeks later, the pictures showed a skunk and a fox – both on the same night! One night we had a very large cat and a smaller one that I think was the Bengal cat we’ve seen around. Maybe I’ll post those pictures sometime…

Now, we’ve been trying to figure out how all those animals get into and out of the garden. We have deer fencing on most of 3 sides of the space. There’s chainlink fence along the 4th side. Some low areas at the base of the fencing have been blocked. So we’ll keep observing, when we can!

Moving garden lights around
Moving garden lights around

Tuesday’s report

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Getting anything done in the garden takes multiple days. On Tuesday morning I was going to plant two six-packs of greens (one is dino kale, the other a red cabbage). I spent an hour hoeing and straightening out the drip tape, hoed out a few extra pigweed plants, and then it was time to get ready to pick the kidlet up from preschool. He goes to school 2 mornings a week, which affords me about 3 extra hours of garden time per week – I can do things like fertilize (I alternate btw a fish/seaweed mix and Biomin 153, which supplies some minerals that our soil is lacking), harvest, etc.

That evening, I picked beans- we still  had a few purple beans, a lot of yellow ones, and some new green pole beans. I also picked ~2 baskets of strawberries. I think we got 1 basket of good ones, and 1 basket of damaged berries. I either eat the damaged ones, or we freeze them for blended juice some evening.

I hadn’t had a chance to rake off the weeds I’d hoed, so I’m a bit nervous to go out there and see what kind of a mess is out there. Plus it’s still really wet from yesterday’s ~0.4 inch of rain, and I don’t want to leave too many sinking footprints…

Hm, I need to find an extra $99 to get rid of the ads below, don’t I? :/