Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Monday morning, June 18, was overcast and cool.  Great day to work in the garden.  Juna came by and helped me reseed areas where the vegetable seeds did not germinate.  We planted extra carrots, eggplant and lettuce.  Had trouble with the watermelon on the hillside too, so I reseeded.  Keep my fingers crossed.  I want watermelon this summer.  And the cucumbers.  There are plants on the hill, but I don't know yet if they are cucumbers or weeds.  We'll see.  And since all the spinach is gone, we planted a whole row of spinach.

Forgot to mention that I put a board in the raised bed part of the garden, and underneath I put banana peels, apple cores, avocado skin. I keep the soil damp.   In the morning I lift the board and what do I find?  All kinds of worms and bugs that eat the vegetables.  I scoop them up and throw them in the garbage.

Rodney pulled out the soaker hoses earlier this year.  They weren't wetting the ground enough.  So last week he make troughs from the upper part of the garden to the lower, in between rows and around tomato plants.  Turn the hose on and fill the trough.  All the plants get watered.  Maybe this will be a good solution to the watering problem.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Gardening at its best!

Alitash came again to garden and brought her friend, Dave, with his 7-year old son, Ezra.  Alitash was excited to see that the radishes she planted on Monday had already started coming up.  Radishes show their faces in 5 - 10 days.  She planted more radishes in between the rows already there.  Then I let her try out my new tool.  It's like a hoe, but it's shaped like a wide triangle.  It cultivates the soil around the plants easily.  Dave planted lettuce and helped Rodney mound 2 bags of soil around the rapidly growing potatoes.  There are purple flowers everywhere, the bees are ecstatic and soon we will have potatoes.  I cleaned up around the plants in the bottom garden and also around the strawberries and squash and zucchini up on the hillside.  We weeded, we watered, but Ezra had the most fun.  He went looking for worms in the compost pile and transferring them gently into the garden beds, covering them with a little bit of soil.  He did it for the longest time.  Then he dug a large hole in the middle of the garden where nothing was growing.  7-year old boys can have the most fun doing very simple things.

We harvested peas, kale, lettuce, mustard greens, rosemary and divided up the last of the radishes we picked the other day.  A wonderful day in the garden!

Thursday, June 7, 2012

The planting and watering has begun.  Three artists came to the garden this morning-Juna, Rodney and Alitash.  It was overcast and cool.  Perfect weather to be out in the garden.  Since a lot of the vegetables are already planted, we filled in where plants didn't come up and extended some rows.

We now have 3 very long rows of corn.  We filled in the beans, broccoli, spinach, carrots.  I wanted to plant more basil, but we ran out of time.  Juna did start 5 or 6 new eggplants.  We harvested radishes, kale, arugula,  spinach and rosemary.  Since all the radishes have been harvested we reseeded the area with radishes again.  The next time we will move the radishes to another location and plant something else in the radish patch.  It's always good to rotate crops.

The compost pile is doing great.  Rodney added 2 bags of leaves from last fall.  The pile is full of worms and the soil is rich.  We have already added compost to two of the garden areas.  In a week or two we will  put compost in the other 3 gardens.