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.
the new strawberries. i think i took this picture on Monday. See below to see how they have recovered!the plants at the front and at the um top left are the newest (there are none in the far right)
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 😦
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
Well, I still haven’t planted a whole bed of fava beans (there are some growing with our greens). I pulled out some cover crop and grain seeds today. T was excited about the wheat seed, so we planted that in the nicely tilled bed that I was going to put favas in (and hurt my knee trying to hoe yesterday). The things we do to avoid huge tantrums (successfully).
I also planted Territorial’s “Wintermax” which should have been planted in September. It has tillage radish (I really want to grow that!), hairy vetch (iirc we grew purple vetch last year), and rye. I put this in 4 beds, plus maybe the end of the wheat bed. I added bell beans (some were beans that we grew, and some were from the 50 pound bag of bell bean seed that we bought. I put those seeds in the 4 (or 6, depending how you look at it) west-most beds. They need a lot of work, so hopefully some of these seeds will grow. It’s supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow night.
(not sure why Z raked the end of the south beds- maybe to pull out all the excess grass and dirt.)
I would have gotten a lot more done (maybe), but an old friend who is visiting from out of town came by for a visit with her 3 kids and hubby. It was awesome to watch the kids explore the garden together. They picked strawberries (wow, there were some to pick! i hadn’t picked in something like a week) – there were actually some undamaged big Albions. They hung out on the pile of compost. The little girl covered up some of the seeds that were on the surface (we didn’t get around to raking them in). It was so sweet. Then we came inside and they played with what seemed like every one of his toys. It was so much fun!
Z’s family comes to town tomorrow. We’ll have some kids who are currently sick staying with us, so I should really head towards bed…
I read today that nasturtiums can help repel cucumber beetles. I’ve tended to avoid them because in my experience they harbor slugs. Something to research- maybe they can grow on a fence at the edge of the garden.
Us posing in front of a rainbow
This morning when we about to go out to breakfast, I spotted a rainbow! Then it started raining for real. Supposedly “Santa Rosa” (a big place) has had ~.17 inch of rain today. We had only .09 inch in all of October, so this is a good start to the month.
I didn’t get out to plant garlic until just before our late lunch. I planted 3 or so bulbs of Italian Late Silverskin Garlic. It’s rough going out there because I have to basically dig through every bit of the top 3 inches of soil in order to try to get out as much grass (green, roots, or dried stuff) as possible to reduce my weed load, which is quite heavy. My boots got a bit muddy, but it really wasn’t that wet out there.
Tonight I picked strawberries, weeded about the next 20 feet of garlic bed, and turned the compost. Not a very productive weekend, but hey, it was Halloween, and we needed to go to the farmers’ market today to get organic raw almonds! #familytime
Today was a crazy day- I had to do a lot of picking up around the house, and in the course of doing laundry I noticed that my car’s brake lights were stuck on. I had to get my car jumpstarted and leave it running until it was time to pick T up from school. Tiny Waltham broccoli head
I did manage to get out to the garden for 15 or 20 minutes this morning! Guess what?! We have little broccoli heads on several Waltham Broccoli plants. Waltham is the city I lived in until I was 22 years old! I transplanted these seedlings the day before my father, who was a Waltham native, died. Here is a small amount of info about Waltham broccoli, which apparently was developed at the UMass Field Station in Waltham in 1950: http://ccgrow.com/phytotheca/broccoli-waltham-29/ It’s clearly not the correct variety for our hot northern California September and early October. I have several friends who work at or go to the Waltham Fields Community Farm on a regular basis 🙂 Here is a pdf with a little bit of info about the City of Waltham and the UMass Waltham Field Station and possibilities for “development” on the property.
Today I started prepping one of the former summer cover crop beds, the one that is just west of the beans. I guess that it will be where I plant either the strawberries, or the garlic. It would be faster to do it by tractor, but then I’d get less exercise! There was a dip in the bed that I was able to fill in a bit using soil that had been left in a pile after one of us had used the landscape rake on a neighboring bed.
I kept trying to assess whether or not to put the seedlings that I bought into the 2nd east bed, which is currently weeds and bell beans, or not. I think I’m going to mow that bed and then hoe out plants in order to put in the greens seedlings that I bought on Sunday. I did some more weeding in the eastmost greens today. What a mess. No sign of the caterpillar (cabbage looper?) that I saw yesterday. caterpillar on red cabbage
It’s amazing how I would never pay for greens that look like this, but I’m so proud to eat these ones!
The raccoons have been digging again. I think I lost one greens plant in the last few days, and countless peas and pea sprouts have been dug up 😦 The camera is back up tonight. The other night Z happened to spot a raccoon climb in and out on the “H” next to the gate.
Oh, I’m thinking of planting bell beans in the last 10 or so feet of the pea row, since I don’t seem to be planting any more peas (it’s past the last recommended date for my area).
On Saturday night, T and I planted some carrots and radishes. We’ll see if anything comes of that- there’s a chance that I’ll accidentally weed them out in the semi-darkness some evening. I harvested greens that night, which means that I also did some weeding.
On Sunday evening I picked about 1.75 baskets of strawberries, which was about 1.3 of the strawberry area. Ooh, tomorrow I can buy strawberry crowns. I also weeded the east side of the newer pea area, and… well, I bought like 6 six-packs of seedlings today (what is wrong with me?! well, I was thinking of maybe replacing the collards and kales that are bolting), so I looked around and tried to figure out where I can plant them. I think that rather than trying to tuck in 1 here and 3 there where other plants haven’t made it, I should use the empty bed to the left of the east bed of greens. It was prepared at the same time as the others, and I’ve kept up with the pigweed for the most part, but it is covered in bell beans and (mostly) grass. Like, it’s hard to find the drip tape. So I should move the drip tape aside and mow and then I guess hoe and put compost down before putting the drip tape back. I’ve been using just a metal file to sharpen my hoes, and I have to say that it is so ineffective! An angle grinder would be better, but I don’t have a good space for using power tools, and of course I don’t want super-sharp tools around the toddler.
Seedlings purchased 10/4/15
When/if my sprained wrist gets all the way better (and why do I feel like when T bumped into me at one point this afternoon, I got some sort of knee injury like a hyperextension or something?) I have a lot of work to do out there- need to put compost out (I’d prefer to use the shovel and wagon, but this requires time, no kid, less pain, and no wind… but the benefit is: exercise, which I feel like I’m not getting out there these days), hoe out existing plants, get drip lines in, and plant garlic (bought seed for that, too – and can onion sets really work at this time of year?) and get ready for strawberries. Whew!
Oh, the slugs are getting bigger every day- some are over an inch long. I killed so many out there and there are so very many more. This is why I don’t want to try to grow lettuce – yet.
farmingmum 