What I did at the garden today
Today I waited till it had stopped raining and went over to the garden, bags of fava bean and potato seeds in hand. Ayala was there- the only other christmukkah refugee to show up.I separated all these clumps of garlic that were in the same bed where we had grown garlic last winter, and spread them out some through the bed. Ayala thinks they are from seeds from the plants this summer. I wonder if someone didn't just plant whole bunches of garlic here and there, cuz some were out of place. I made a huge, muddy mess of the path, and it started raining before I finished. Not sure how even the soil is in that bed, and it is really clayey, so we'll see how this stuff grows.
Then I planted fava beans in a bed that had had tomatoes in it this summer. It's a bed that had been double-dug this spring. I also put some in one of the beds up front, near the water. There's not a lot of space there, cuz it's between a comfrey and a huge, happy artichoke. I would like to grow a whole lot of favas- I bought some dried favas at the store this week and they were like 2.52 a pound. They grow all year here- there is no excuse for not growing them (aside from fellow gardeners not liking them). I also snuck about a half dozen seeds in where people planted peas a few weeks ago, so that if the peas don't grow, we'll still have something!
After that I went next door and dug around in the planting boxes to see how deep they are. I almost used the first one I came to, but then I realized that for some reason, it's not as deep as it looks. I planted them in a slightly longer box that still needs more soil. Hopefully our compost will hurry up so we can put it in there. There was some rotten garlic in the bag with the taters, and I found 2 or 3 that were plantable. I noticed a couple of fava beans coming up in the front of the new lot. I wonder if they are from the missing seeds that I harvested this summer.
It was just too wet by this point. I picked through the waste greens that Ayala had left to take some home, feed some to the worms (added some dirt, too, just in case there are any worms left in the box), and put the rest into buckets for adding to the compost. I had wanted to shift the compost, but it was so ridiculously wet out...the ground in front of those bins is toast. Near there, some radishes are too far gone. Hopefully we can save seeds from a few of them, since radishes also grow year 'round.
Ayala worked on the strawberries (dividing and replanting) and greens (mostly picking), and I think she did some other stuff.
I wish we had gotten wood chips for mulch for the paths! Sigh. I guess we should have a list of what kind of wood we want - redwood, um...people were opposed to pine, i think, even though it was fine when we had pine wood chips at my last house...but we need something that's not allelopathic (sp) like walnut or juniper or whatever.
It is raining really hard now! And there is this weird wind from time to time.
posted by mahtin @ 1:20 AM
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