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.
On Thursday morning I weeded one side of the Chandler strawberry bed, picked a basket of strawberries, and fertilized the old strawberry bed (kelp/fish). In the afternoon, T and I spread some green onion seeds out in the summer strawberries. That evening, T and I planted a packet of Dragon Tongue (Territorial, seeds from last year) and Painted Mountain Corn (Johnny’s). T is really good at using the jab planter that I still can’t quite get to work for me. If I can get him to plant in a line near the drip tape someday, I’ll be happy. If I can get that thing working for me, I’ll also be happy.
I then picked 2 more baskets of strawberries and pulled a bunch of old leaves and stems, rotting berries, and a few growing plants – oops – out of the bed. After that I turned the compost since I hadn’t done that in like a week. It smells so much better than a few weeks ago!
Z used the chisel plow on the 2 new beds yesterday
and he raked them Thursday. I have a lot of work to do by hand, though. He put in a loader load of compost but I’d like to have more in there. We’ll see.
Took pictures of a few bugs that were in the Chandlers:
unidentified larva on a strawberry leaf
that not a ladybug, is it? nah. something else.
unidentified caterpillar on a strawberry leaf. webbing is present. (i think it was wrapped up in the webbing when I found it)
I think I’m finally going to get a copy of Whitney Crenshaw’s book Garden Bugs of North America
I didn’t make it to the garden this morning because we bought our (first?) farm truck! It’s a used Ford F150 with room for the carseat in the back seat. My buddy Chris advised against getting one because they need a lot of what he calls “wrenching” all the time. He told me about his friend who has a graveyard of Ford parts from trucks he’s had over the years.
I got out there tonight, turned on the water, and realized that the pressure we’ve been running it at was too low. There wasn’t any water coming out of the drip tape in the 5 beds we’re trying to water at the moment (3 strawberry, one alliums and weeds, and the new corn/bean bed). I turned it up and left it on for longer than I meant to- about 75 minutes.
I got to take a leisurely walk around the garden. I found our first ripe Chandler. I am mostly still picking buds off of the smaller plants, but I need to stop doing that. I had intentionally let this one form a berry, though. It was pretty good but could have used more water.
Then I went out to the strawberries and picked 2 baskets! I can’t believe how much old debris still needs to be taken out of there. I take so many fistfuls out every day! I even accidentally pulled out at least 2 strawberry plants!
The Seascapes that I planted the other day look terrible. Maybe I should just compost the rest. It’s either that, or plant them! I’m concerned that they’d be more vulnerable to diseases and pests because they’ve been in the fridge for so long.
We’ll see what can get done this weekend. It might be a good time for flailing, except that I think the mower still needs to be lubed and have its belts checked (Z burned them up last year). I heard that Sunday won’t be as windy. I can only hope. It’s time to get that chisel plow and landscape rake out and put them to work!
I’ve spent the last few days’ garden time hoeing and weeding (mostly) the new strawberries. Work on removing old leaves continues in the old strawberries. For some reason I took this picture before I removed a bunch of grass at the edge of them:
We’ve been getting about a basket per day. The ones that I picked on Friday (?) were so delicious when we ate them on Saturday. Tonight we drank some frozen ones that Zak blended.
You can see that I overfertilized the summer strawberries:
After the .7 inches of rain we got on Friday I was hesitant to do much other work on the bedprep, and the last 2 days have been very windy…
Well, I got out there tonight and pulled flowers off of the newer berries. i tried to pull some weeds but the soil is so hard that i can’t get all the ones that are close to the plants.
Although the soil in the old bed is so wet that berries are rotting:
last year’s seascape strawberries. not as good/edible as they look at the moment
The soil in the newer berries is cracking. We had a bit of rain last night and today.
It took about 4 hours of work to get the weeds hoed out of this bed and 6 or 10 inches away from the plants!
Alrighty, the Chandlers have been hoed. The plants are so small and most of the buds have been so small that I think these may have to stick around until next spring. I guess I need to stop pulling the buds off, though. We (mostly Z) have been getting our irrigation going – the leak on the right was fixed! Now maybe I can fertilize (starting with a kelp/seaweed product). This reminds me that I need a new sprayer.
My hands are killing me from hoeing, but the bed needs a good going-over with the Cobra weeder (http://www.cobrahead.com/). No time. Last year’s berries need some maintenance, and I need to hoe alongside the summer berries I planted this spring and last fall. I also have more to plant. The water line doesn’t quite reach the end of that bed. I think that if I run out, I might just put the crowns (if they are still ok to use) at the end of the Chandlers…
One of the next beds I’d like to get going (because it has so little grass growing) is last year’s bean and pea row (it also had one cherry tomato plant). There are all these weird holes there- check oneout! Hopefully just from gophers, but why were so many holes not closed back up? The surface of the ground is scarily dry. 😦
A rather large hole that has a crack coming off of it. The ground looks like a cross between Petaluma Adobe and cement
I hoed the Chandlers, so now they can get some daylight! This photo shows “after” with “before” below. I was hoping to put a bunch of compost on the ground, but I’m rethinking that as the sow bugs get to be really bad after I put compost down. I hate to leave the ground bare!! Hopefully these plants will grow a bit more very soon. They really want to make berries. Meanwhile, Z and T picked a couple of strawberries from the old patch this weekend!
those Chandler strawberry plants are just to the left of center- you can see a few taller fava (or bell?) bean plants in there
In other news, I got 2 packages of seeds today 🙂 Z and T worked on getting irrigation to the “new” strawberries, as it’s going to get hot this week!
farmingmum 