In Matters of Dirt, Dirt Matters

The planting bed out front has purchased "garden soil" in it. It gets the same kind of watering as the back. It had broccoli and kale planted in it right about the same time as the back yard.

I think they look pretty anemic. While I'm sad about that, the plants in the back are giving me cause for optimism. Even though I routinely gripe about my colander garden soil, the work I've put in seems to have paid off. The back yard cole crops, in three different beds, look greener and larger.

Another interesting point is that the back yard plants have had some insect predation (just look at those broccoli leaves below) but they appear to be "fighting back" effectively, outgrowing the chewing of the cabbage moth caterpillars.

Giving Hugelkultur a try

I've done some whining on this blog about how difficult keeping things watered here is. Partly it's due to our terribly sandy soil, partly due to the soaker hoses being tempermental, partly I need to get out there and amend things.

I had noodled around with the idea of using an old technique, bandied about a lot by permaculture folks, of hugelkultur. Basically, you're making a sponge of wood and biomass under the growing layer. Since we have both overly permeable soil and a bit of old wood and brush lying about, I got some help from Eric and made an experimental bed.

First, we dug out the soil about 18" and set it aside on a tarp. Then we layered logs and pieces of logs on the bottom.

Over that went branches of the plants we'd cut down a few weeks ago, then a layer of fresh chicken manure and bedding, and then those layers were watered down.

 

Over those went the totally uncured material from the compost bin. Turns out, if you never ever water it, and it dries out, you're not composting, you're preserving. Amazing things there were. This time, they got watered. Maybe those paper coffee cups will finally break down.

 

Finally, the soil got shoveled back on top. I stopped every time a "layer" was completed, shoveling the soil on in flattish bands, and wetted each one as well as I could. It wasn't 100% effecive, as the soil shed some of the water, but it seemed a good idea.

When it was a large, flat mound, kind of like a stubby mesa, the experimental planting began. I started seeds a while ago, and they have been doing well, but very much needed to be moved from their six-packs.

Half of each six-pack went into the new bed, half into the barely prepared rest of the bed.

During the work, I'd discovered a handful of self-seeded kale or broccoli or something, right where the handle of that hand fork is. That will provide yet another point of data. I'll have to keep hand-watering this bed until it rains, partially because it's not in shape for a new irrigation system, and partially because I apparently shoveled the soaker hose in half while removing it.

I also noticed these.

It seems ages ago since I planted these, but the brussels sprouts are finally sprouting. I doubt that they'll be any good, but some day I'm going to figure out how to grow them in our climate!

So that moved about 1/6 of the broccoli and kale I'd started. I suppose tomorrow I'll get out there and prep and transplant the others, plus the leeks and onions. I can't wait for the easy days of winter gardening to really begin here.

Beans and other things

"What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day's work."
from Walden

And the beans are, indeed, up. I don't hoe them, however. This pale beauty is only one of the rows of large Italian pole beans that constitute my main bean interest.  Although I believe I sound like I've become slightly unhinged, there are few tastes that I find as thoroughly satisfying as this bean. Hot, cold, dressed and plain, I love these beans. While I've done everything I know to safeguard them, with bird protection and iron-based snail poison, I'm not confident enough to have planted them all. I kept back some of my stock to fill in any nibbled beyond survival.

The yellow wax bush beans are also emerging, but I didn't get any good pictures of them. Imagine a triple row of them in front of the six sweet peppers I broke down and bought and put in early, just because I was feeling optimistic. (Also because I started no plants of my own this year.)

Everywhere I look, things are stretching out to the lengthening days. We've had what I consider "farmers' rain," that is steady rain at night, followed by clearing days that resolve into very warm afternoons. The garden approves.

Every day for the past four days, the police have called me. Not because of any plant-based violations, but because the bees are swarming and I'm a point person for picking them up. So far, I've gotten another beekeeper to get each one, but I went and set up a new hive just in case they call again. I need to make an equipment order so that I can manage four hives. I wonder if any of the kids at the local high school would like to work on hives with me? I should ask. . .

The Katy apricots are largeish, but few. The tree is showing some alarming signs -- whole twigs wilting with no apparent reason. I hear that apricots are short-lived trees here, susceptible to many diseases.

The transplanted persimmon is showing good health. Maybe next year it will bear?

One of the two Early Girls I bought with the peppers.  The other one is going to the front yard bed, along with a "help yourself!" sign. I'm looking forward to painting that.

Both front yard Blenheims are loaded with baby 'cots. I have high hopes. Apricot everything!

Although the photo is blurry, it's time to break out the spray oil for the Anna apple and get the wooly aphids under control. It's been a very successful method, as far as I can tell, no matter how unorthodox.

Everywhere I go in the garden, I hear hurry, hurry. . . it's time to get things done. Maybe I will, and maybe I won't. It's good to know that some things are managing without me very well.

Strawberry Fields Forever

 That bed of Tristars? I had hoped to gently clip off runners to populate another bed (who doesn't want double the strawberries?) and I kept waiting for runners.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Nope, no runners. And yet, that bed. . . it was looking kind of, kind of. . . dense. (Sorry about the crappy picture -- using a phone).

What is going on underground? A lift with a digging fork revealed --- aiiieeee! It's the Great Lumping Mass. These plants have multiplied. When I began, each berry plant was a teensy slip of a thing.

If I shake enough dirt off of the mass of clumpiness, it's easier to divide the soon-to-be separate strawberry plants. Notice those berries? This variety is still pumping out flowers and berries, some of them quite large. Unfortunately, they taste like watered-down strawberry jell-o, so no joy there. I still give them points for trying.

It didn't take long to fill up another bed, on a three/two pattern. Then I looked back at the original bed, and between a third and a half of it was still very thick with berry plants.

So I eyed another bed in the garden. Dig, lift, shake, separate, and it, too, will hopefully produce luscious berries in the spring. Alas, however, there were many, many, many more berries left to go. I got into a rhythm, flinging separated berries into a cardboard box until the bed was nearly all thinned and I was tired.

And then I turned to the local gardening lists and found homes for all of them. Go forth and grow, little berries! I even had enough left in the bed to provide a friend with berry plants days later.

Someone is going to get a strawberry cream cake for her birthday next year!

Almost Done!

Eric has been Mr. Garden Studmuffin all this week. (Plus he's either made me tea or met me with coffee every day this week, and gave me a really helpful leg and back rub one night because I started a "boot camp" type fitness program that felt very intimidating. Poor guy is getting up at O'dark-thirty in the mornings, participant or not.)

The thing I'm blogging about, though, even though it's only one thing, was part of getting the yard really ready for the tour. I'm trying to clean up, spruce up, and fill empty spots. So I bought some plants that I might have waited and grown from seed, or those that died in their pots quickly or birds ate or something.

Yesterday I put the climbing winter squashes in half of the spinach bed. This half wasn't intensively planted, and besides, some of the other spinach is bolting -- it's not going to last long. The butternuts I planted never came up, so I grabbed a couple of them at the nursery, plus a Kuri Red squash and a Small Sugar pumpkin.

But half the spinach bed isn't too big, right? What to do? Denise and Kevin had given me a bunch of huge bamboo from their yard, and Eric was a boy scout, so. . .
 

It's probably strong enough for a person to climb on, but the twine wouldn't hold. Certainly it's sturdy enough to hold pounds and pounds of squash, plus it's going to store easily or break down easily. Darn thing has to be 12-13' tall, though.

I'm going to use it as a place to put my "growing vertically adds space" sign for the tour on Sunday.

Got Dramamine?

In the middle of shoveling mulch in the back garden,

 my crowded hive swarmed. Fortunately, I was there to see it and fortunately they started landing in a low plum tree. Also fortunate? I had a deep with enough ready frames to tempt them in. Finally fortunately, my dear son was willing and able to shoot video of the coaxing them into the box.

You might need antinausea medication to watch the first video. Unfortunately, my cameraman sees the world faster than most people, so jerky edits don't phase him. Be grateful that I didn't post the six minutes of the whole swarm process, because that one almost made me fall off my chair.

Never before have I experienced a mid-swarm hiving -- it was a matter of plopping the queen into the prepared hive box before they had really established a midway point on the plum branch. The bees really want a safe, dark home, and are easily persuaded once given one. I have questions about the status of the original hive. Will it swarm again? There were lots of queen cells the last time I went through it.

I'm clearly going to spend some time next week assembling some more frames and waxing in starter strips on them. There are too many old wax frames in my storage area, and I'm in need of fresh equipment so I can rotate out the old stuff. How do beekeepers keep up? I don't know.

We're almost done mulching, which means the back yard is closer to completion. I wrote an "I will know I'm done when. . . " list, and have been drawing lines through items. As is the nature of lists, however, a few items have been added at the bottom.

Transplanted peppers today, tiny, tiny peppers, and I may have to redraw the garden plan for more. There aren't enough bells for my taste, although there are many hot varieties. Then, I'll need to figure out where to put the cucumbers (and what kind of trellis/stake system to use to lift 'em up with) and get on that. I had hoped that some things would be bigger by now, but I assume the tour folk will know that gardens are a process.

Finally, I managed to get a quickish overview of the garden here. If you listen carefully, you can hear our youngest sprout talking about her plans. And you can see the various stages of growing/going by/just starting in the beds.

Tomato time

During a break in the rain today, a friend of mine and I

Set up the funky linear cage system I like to use for the tomatoes

Perhaps I should have placed the tomatoes in first, but by carefully reeeeeaching through the 6" openings in the mesh, I managed to tip each of the first eight seedlings into holes made on a slant, so that they'll make more roots along their stems and hopefully grow very happily

Of course, it's not supposed to rain again, at least not this week. Wonder if it will again? I did lay out the hoses carefully so I can hook them up to the irrigation system if needed.

And tomorrow? I'm going to heavily harvest spinach ahead of the dry weather. Tonight's dinner was a bowl of leaves sauteed with garlic and dressed with a tiny bit of vinegar. The namers of the "Gigante d'Inverno" weren't kidding! 

I think the one next to it is Monstreux de Viroflay, but it's not such a monster.

Once more, with pictures

What they looked like and why I thought they should be transplanted. (See how weirdly sunny it was? Like a Hollywood "spring day" cliche.)

They look sort of small in those big gallon/half gallon pots.

The roots did air prune, just like they were supposed to. I think the mold is a bonus effect.

All lined up. San Marzano in the big pots, Roma in the yogurt containers. Extra ones got jammed in "community pots" when I ran out of individuals.

And then it was time to start all over again, with peppers.

These took a few more tries to get the appropriate ice creamy shapes.

And then I found the sunniest spot of the day to put them. I hoped that putting them on a board would prevent hitchikers from wiggling in the drainage holes.

Turns out they don't fit all that well under the lights, and today I put them out to spend some happy time in the rain. It's going to be in the high 40s tonight, but I'm tempted to leave them out there because, first off, it's dark already, and secondly, they're heavy from being rained on. We'll see if Lazy Gardener Ethics kill all that hard work.

Rain is General . . .

. . . all over my town.

Last night I fell asleep with the last paragraph of "The Dead" in my head, to the sound of continuing rain. Even though I know of at least three places in my house that aren't dealing well with it (not the roof, thank goodness) I'm delighted to see and hear and, yes, feel it.

What you aren't going to be able to see are all the pictures I took of me carefully transplanting paste tomatoes from their soil "blocks" to big pots, using lots of new potting soil. As the day I was doing it had air as soft as a baby's bottom, I felt foolish -- shouldn't I just be popping them in the ground? The next night, I had my answer. The temperature dropped back into the forties, and then the skies opened. I had taken careful pictures, but the camera was loaded with videos of my kids doing something they probably shouldn't, and it took too long to download. Then I mislaid the camera and it hasn't shown up again. Yes, I live in a house where these things happen.

Today is the second day of truly pissing down rain. The rain barrels are filling up, and the things out in the garden already are pretty cheerful, as am I, since I laid sod three weeks ago and now I'm not using bathwater to keep it alive, while prancing around in my jammies.

Alas, I will not be spending the day curled up on the couch knitting with tea in reach. It's Drive Around Like A Homeschooling Parent Day, so hooray for rain gear.

"Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

Scenes of Winter

The month was so dry, and so cold. . . some plants persevered. . . some withered under the conditions.

It's difficult to believe that this pepper might pull through. I haven't pruned it back yet, just in case.

But spring can only be waiting to pop out, now that we've had a few good days of rain.

It's a gardener's discipline to let these tender spears alone; but this isn't the year for an asparagus harvest.

Today was a good day to transplant "Viroflay," "Gigante d'Inverno" and "Bloomsdale" spinach. Then, learning my lesson, I went back inside and promptly seeded another flat full.

 

What are you anticipating?

Time's up

Perhaps if I had an entire farm, crops would come to fruition, be harvested, and then be pulled and followed with a soil-building cover crop, while elsewhere, cover crops would be turned under and then followed with new, seasonally-appropriate crops.

Perhaps.

Or maybe it would be like my garden now, where plantings are pulled before they're completely ready, to be immediately followed with the ones which are outgrowing their pots.

I transplanted today.

Pickling cucumbers where the Melting Sugar and Oregon Spring snow peas were. I wasn't going to save seed from those, so out they went. Well, mostly.


Bolting yellow carrots up to make room for rainbow bell peppers.


Elsewhere I turned soil and weeded and put out the butternut squash, then placed the sunflowers between the potatoes. That should provide some much-needed aesthetic oomph, plus lovely cut flowers.

By then, maybe the sweet peas would be done, anyhow.