Less to do?

I thought that there would be less to do come fall, but there is still plenty to do. I started about 9 a.m., cutting off dead leaves on the tomato plants and eggplants. I decided to feed the tomato plants with fish emulsion. That is a nitrogen-based food which normally one would use several times in the spring, but the tomato plants last so long here in southern California. In Chicago, there probably would be no more tomato plants. Here, I could have tomatoes as late as Thanksgiving. So I decided they needed more nutrition.

At 10 a.m. Michiko arrived. We went to work up on the hillside. We hoed and pitchforked the soil to loosen it up. Then we added a large bag of organic compost. We made two rows for planting and watered with Super Thrive. Then we planted the back row with chard, and the front row with spinach. Then we watered again.

Michiko helped me hang the basil that I had cut earlier that morning. I cut down a whole plant, washed it and then cut it up to hang in the workshop garage to dry.

I took new pH levels of the gardens. The other gauge was broken. Some of the numbers, in the 1st reading, showed the soil to be too alkaline, but it wasn't as bad as I first thought . Unfortunately I have read that it is easier to make acidic soil more alkaline, than it is to make alkaline soil more acidic. Maybe I overdid it in trying to make the original soils less acidic.