Today I was working in the Chandlers and I heard a repeated loud rustling sound. It was scrub jay eating seeds out of fava bean pods! Grr. That explains why we have so few bell bean seeds left on the bell bean plants 😦 They’ll have to be mowed this weekend. Quail eating seeds in the garden (dill seed?) one day, a scrub jay the next. The cat got something in her eye yesterday and hasn’t been around that much. She’s sleeping in our cleaning rags right now.
Quail running through the chard, near where I planted dill seed and maybe zinnias a few days ago
I managed to plant the remaining 3 seedlings – Armenian cucumbers – tonight. I also weeded half of one side of the sunflowers and picked the Seascapes. Less than a basket of delicious berries. This morning I picked 2 baskets of Chandlers. It’s time to focus on removing Seascape runners and weeds, rather than spending hours each week doing that for the Chandlers.
The sow bugs are still terrible. Need to fertilize, and water less. I am not the one who turns the water on and off in the morning, tho…
Today I think I found a mystery mint family plant next to the summer strawberry bed. Hoping it’s lemon balm. I didn’t try smelling or tasting it. It’s probably from sometime when T and I were out planting seeds in the summer strawberry bed. Sometimes he prefers to plant outside of the bed. There’s a lot of bindweed and purslane. I haven’t been spending much time over there, as you can tell.
lemon balm?
I keep finding weird bugs everywhere, so I have started a photo album of pests in our garden. Today I think I found a lygus bug in the Chandlers. DOH!
lygus bug?
I guess I need to figure out what plants the damsel bug likes! Apparently it shows up later in the season.
tomatillo plant- lots of things have been eating leaves, including what looks like leafminers
Check out these gorgeous summer strawberries! I think they are sweet anns. there are a lot of big ones coming along!
beautiful summer strawberries
Tonight I picked 2 baskets of Chandlers. I weeded a lot and pulled off all the runners I could find. That plus a tour of most of the garden took an hour and a half! I didn’t get to pick old berries because we were trying to get T to bed
On Thursday evening I planted more corn and green, yellow, and purple green beans. I snuck a few more Blacktail Mountain watermelon seeds in, too. I don’t have a lot of luck with this method. I also tried to fill in some of the spots where I had poor germination (eaten seed?) in the last planting. That was 2 weeks ago, oops.
This morning (Friday, a day that peaked around 93 or 94 degrees) I tried to smooth out the west-most beds. The soil is so sandy there! There is still a lot of grass, which I wish weren’t a problem. Then I prepped some more ground for potatoes. I only went about 12 feet because there’s no drip tape past where we’ve already planted, so the soil is really dry in the top several inches. Then I forget if I did something else (maybe checked the Chandlers?) but I went and picked some old strawberries. I put Camarosas in one basket and Seascapes in the other, but I don’t quite know which is which.
This evening T and I planted sunflower seeds! I had a big bag of mixed sunflowers, and a packet of old Mammoth sunflowers (packed for 2014) and another packet of a big sunflower. I tried to put the big ones in the middle of the bed just in case they can block some light from hitting the house, which is on the other side of the garden. I want to cover that bed with compost but I am a bit concerned that we only have 4 or 5 yards left. There are way different bugs in that bed than I’ve seen anywhere else in the garden. We’ll see if they just eat the seeds, or what. I also worry that I could have planted the seeds too deep.
To do: hoe the greens, add all those buckets of stuff I’ve got to the existing compost pile – it will be much bigger that way, pick strawberries, plant dry beans, plant flowers, plant cover crops (Z needs to prepare a lot of beds for this), plant pole beans, plant the other sunflower bed, go to herb fair and get some perennials to plant…where?
Z has pretty much mowed the whole back area with the tractor. He moved the tractor and mower back under cover tonight because he’s noticing new rust. A few mornings ago the fog was down to the ground, so I’m guessing that that’s why. That was the day I had all this weird wilting on the Chandlers (did I write about that?).
This morning, Z and T planted some potatoes while I worked on the old strawberries. I picked a basket and also pulled out half of a 5-gallon bucket of junk. So now I have 5 buckets of old leaves and strawberries, and 1 or 2 buckets of kitchen scraps (including lots more strawberries and their cuttings that came off so I could freeze them) to add to the compost pile. I’ll consider it a new start. The compost pile I started 10 days ago is still warmer than my hands, so that’s good, but it’s pretty small! There’s also a problem with the inconsistent particle size (things like squash rinds, broccoli stems, etc can really mess up the cohesion that’s needed to maintain the heat of the whole pile).
We went to the farm supply store today (tho it really is more of a garden-scale store) and got more seedlings, more seeds, 5 or 6 tomato cages, some more fertilizers, those arm-protectors that will be helpful with the blackberries that are coming in a month or so, and another hat, since we have to buy the XL ones when we find them. All three of us have huge heads. I need to look at my receipt, because that doesn’t sound like $200 worth of stuff.
The seedlings were the “end of the long weekend” leftovers. Some were pretty rootbound. I watered my plants before I brought them into the store to pay for them, since several (especially the Sweetwater ones in the round pots) were pretty dry. Tonight I planted 7 tomatoes, 2 tomatillos, and about 5 teeny tiny basils. The tomatoes I transplanted yesterday, especially my Sungold cherry tomatoes, look so yellow! (they are at the top right in the bed in this picture). I am worried that my tomatoes might be too close to my Sweet Ann and Seascape strawberries. Only time will tell. The strawberries don’t look so great- lots of tiny red spots on the leaves. I will have to look that up sometime, huh?
2016 tomato bed (#1?). Photo taken before I put some tiny basil seedlings in-between some of the tomatoes
Is it bad that I am planning on putting the peppers that I bought into the tomato bed? I sure hope not.
I had to check what I wrote in my last post, since it’s been a while!
I did a bit of digging and probably doubled the length of Z’s potato bed, but never got around to putting in a longer line of drip tape and planting. I was going to work on digging this morning, but then Z pointed out that mowing would be a good idea. I think I cut more than half of the grass in the garden bed area. While I was out there, I realized that the winter greens could go in the northwest 1/8th of the garden. So we should get cover crops in there soon. I also mowed where we want to put tomatoes, and alongside the newer strawberry beds 🙂
Z did some chisel plowing this afternoon. Even after 2 or 3 passes, the beds still need a lot of work. Like rototilling work. There are humongous clods and there’s no actual bed to plant in :(. I wish we could leave it this way. Maybe for some cover crops, but not for flowers or veggies! Hopefully we can get the potato situation dealt with and get water onto some of these beds so we can plant stuff. This is a holiday weekend, so by Sunday or Monday there probably won’t be many good seedlings left at the stores. Maybe this gives me a few days to get things ready before buying more plants (?). I also don’t have a potassium-rich fertilizer for pre-planting (for the tomatoes and ‘taters).
a garden bed that has been chisel plowed. Note the huge clods of dirt. I think maybe this bed could be for pole beans
On Friday I did some fertilizing (with Biomin Booster 153). The older corn and beans had been looking pretty stressed. I guess I put kind of a lot on the strawberries (though I ran out about 80% of the way thru the old strawberries, oops). The summer berries had been looking stressed.
I spent so much time this week pulling strawberry runners! I swear that you can pull a couple off a plant and then 2 plants later you can look back and the 1st plant has more runners. The summer plants look like they are slowing down their runner production. I kept too many of them, but I guess I can thin later. Those are probably famous last words that led me last year to have a bed that looks like this:
Old strawberry bed. The green grass in the background has already dried out and was mowed on Saturday
I think my newer plantings of strawberries’ roots are too shallow. It’s pretty easy to pull a whole (what do you call it?) section of a plant off when I’m just trying to break a runner off near the plant. I should be using one of those little pairs of scissors that people use for trimming herb, shouldn’t I? I actually do have such a pair, but it’s in a hard-to-get-to place in the house.
The latest planting of beans and corn has emerged. It’s past time to plant more!
corn and beans seedlings. Note end of grey kitty’s tail in front left
It’s amazing how much the weeds can differ from one bed to another. There is so much pigweed around the corn and beans. Thankfully I haven’t seen much in the strawberries. Bindweed is terrible everywhere. Â There is some bermudagrass at the end of the bean bed. I have been pulling it out and putting it on a gopher mound to make it visible so I could put it into the green waste bin. I think I forgot to do that and mowed it this morning. D’oh!
Most of the greens that I planted last week are still there, but haven’t grown much – except for the Fordhook Giant chard! I think Z ran over some greens with the tractor tires – we’ve been trying to get the potato bed to go in-between the greens.
It’s hard to explain just how dry the soil is out there. After I mowed today, I went out with a rake and tried to cover a lot of the bare soil (from old and new gopher activity) with some of the cut grass.
view of the hill and the northeast corner of the garden. You can hardly see the remains of the pile of purchased compost behind the fence.blurry photo from around sunset tonight. it shows the new bed of chard, cabbage, and kaleÂ
I started transplanting the cabbage, chard, kale (and, to come, broccoli) seedlings on Monday or Tuesday. I had to take a break for a few days because it got so hot out (93 degrees, I think). I put compost out over a lot of the 2 beds I’m using because I just couldn’t stand seeing all that bare soil. Dust sometimes comes up when I walk on the paths. That’s soil erosion right there. Still considering trying out some landscape fabric and/or burlap for the paths. Just need Z to stop at our local farm supply store on the way home from work.
Z got excited about getting the potatoes we bought into the ground. It’s probably too late, and the potatoes are somewhat overgrown already, but hey, we bought them, so we have to use them. I suggested putting them between the two greens beds, since there’s so much space between them. He got started today, opening the ground with the mattock and planting like 20 feet of potatoes!
Today I planted 8 or 10 feet of Trilogy bush beans and Ashworth OP yellow corn (from Fedco). Both are organic, of course ;). I also transplanted 2 6-packs of dino kale. This morning, I didn’t have much time out there because I’d had a doctor’s appointment. I weeded and pulled  yet more runners off of the Chandler strawberries, and found 4 slugs. Yay for getting those out of the way. I saw a box elder bug today, I forget which bed it was in (not the old berries, though). At the end of the night I pulled runners out of the summer strawberries. It’s crazy in that bed!!
the north end of the summer strawberry row. too many runners! and the weeds are/were encroaching on the bed
I’m hoping to get a new compost pile started in the next few days. I haven’t had any empty buckets for some time, and there is (or was, before the current wind storm, which seems to have broken the outdoor table in our yard!) so much debris on the ground next to the old strawberries. Probably 3 5 gallon buckets’ worth. I picked and ate a half a dozen strawberries this evening. We’ve still been getting less than a basket per night.
Someday I’d like to learn about windspeed. I grew up in a place that had hurricanes and strong winds during winter storms, and I have to say that this is not a mere 21 mile per hour wind.
On Monday I planted 2 varieties of chard (fordhood giant and perpetual spinach), 2 varieties of cabbage (1 green 1 red), and 1 variety of kale (white russian). Didn’t really add compost at beginning. Ground had been chisel plowed and raked ~2x and Z had put some compost in. I hate having the ground exposed like this. 1st plants may have drowned or gotten too hot from the ground/watering after planting. Have 8 more six-packs of greens seedlings. Will have to use 2nd bed. That stinks, because I have to hoe and rake it before I can plant there! 😦
There is so much debris in this bed! I don’t think it would have gotten digested if we’d waited another week… there are also hard spots where the soil has already dried out too much (or the plow didn’t affect it).
Here’s a strawberry I picked and ate this morning! Z picked a basket from the old berries tonight.
Well, on Saturday I pulled grass around all the blackberries I could find along the northern part of the fence next to our neighbors – and cut out the biggest parts. I put that stuff into the green bin for someone else to compost it. Then Z mowed that area and then I went back and exposed the blackberries again  and then yesterday, Z dug them out. I did some raking and hoeing in one of the new beds this weekend and on Sunday we bought seedlings- greens, tomatoes, some peppers iirc, one (!) tomatillo (is that enough for pollination and stuff? gotta look that up), and potatoes. T was excited to help me water the seedlings yesterday. Z put drip tape out in one of the beds this morning.
I did a bit of work in the old strawberries last night, and ate another delicious Chandler 🙂
While I was hoeing alongside the Chandlers this morning I talked with the… uncle? of the couple next door who have kids around T’s age. He was mowing the field next to ours because his son has bought the place, had the front house fixed up (I noticed this winter that a dude was there fixing it up all the time and the family had moved into a single-wide trailer), and will be moving in. They have a kid T’s age, and one who’s around 3 years older. He seemed to dismiss the possibility of T and the kid playing together cuz she’s a girl. We’ll see. Though I don’t know about him playing on the roundup-ed swingset, which was installed months ago. Well, I haven’t seen anyone spraying around it in months.
He asked if I wanted him to spray the blackberries that are along the chainlink fence between our 2 properies. I told him that we’ll dig them out. He’s all, “I hate these things.” It doesn’t matter – it’s not your property. I told him that for organic (certification) I’d have to not include anything grown within 50 feet of the fence. I’m sure he doesn’t care and if we don’t deal with it first thing in the morning we’ll have a problem. I should have dealt with it today, but I didn’t get that much time outside tonight and I wanted to work on my hoeing some more. I noticed that the mattock is in the well house with the tools that I use most frequently, so that’s convenient.
After dinner, I got outside to the old strawberries and managed to pick about a half a basket. The sun had pretty much set, so we’ll see what they look like in the morning. I’m not going to deal with them now. I haven’t been eating any all week because Z tends to bring in berries that are mushy. 😦
The beans are emerging nicely. I should find the edamame seeds and pop them in. The raccoons discovered that bed last night:
evidence of digging, most likely by raccoons
If you look closely, you’ll see a lot of bindweed, some cheeseweed mallow, some grass, and maybe a wild radish. I have been waiting to weed until I am more sure if any of the flowers or herbs we planted are going to come up. I have a real problem with recognizing them in the seedling stage, though!
In other beds I’ve also got lots of (curly?) dock, redroot pigweed, still some lambsquarters, that thing that could be wild chamomile, purslaine, that thing that gets really long and woody (no idea what it is), more grass, and maybe some chickweed still. Also a few bristly oxtongue, some prickly lettuce, and another broadleaf weed whose name I always forget.
Another thing I did today was pull at some of the 5-foot-plus grass that’s starting to lean from the garlic bed into the Chandlers. I always get a cut on my hand when I do that, and I’ve got little bits of something embedded in my skin.
Well, I did house and personal business stuff this morning, so I only got outside for like 20 minutes. I raked some more of the soil, compost, and dirt around in one of the new beds. Then I worked on the strawberries for a bit. This evening, I picked some fava and bell beans. Then I raked up 2 wagonloads of grass that Z had weedwhacked (brush cutter blade) and moved it over near the compost. Then I… worked on the strawberries some more. There are starting to be some gaps between plants from my having removed dead and dying leaves, and accidentally pulling out whole strawberry plants in the process.
Our comfrey reappeared! I think we had originally had 2 plants, but I am not sure if the other is still out there. More below.
I would like to have 2-4 perennials at the head of each bed (shorter-term goal). I bought plants last year and that didn’t work out very well – they were too expensive, and too big, and some got eaten by gophers. Including a 4′ long bog sage. I also want to have perennials along the borders of the garden. And a perennial herb bed somewhere in the middle. Oy, what do I need 100 feet of herbs for, though? (selling them. where would I process and dry them?) Mummy needs a greenhouse for starting her own plants.
farmingmum 