starting to clear up

The season's end is here. Everything should be cleared by 31 October. I started on that yesterday.

A trip to the garden yesterday revealed no more cucumbers but again a few zucchinis. Harvested all the remaining green tomatoes - excellent as salsa and I will try fried green tomatoes tonight. More carrots. I also removed the few little ears of corn that were straggling, for use as guinea pig food. Only the rainbow chard and collards remain for harvesting. I left a few tiny winter squashes to see if they do something over the next week or so.


I took down the beans and removed all the rest of the plants, which generated an additional compost heap. Unfortunately, I missed the garden clear-up in the morning during which Parks & Recreation got rid of unwanted material with their truck.


Even at mid-afternoon the light is dimmer and the shadows longer. I've really enjoyed having this garden and I will miss it over the winter months.


This morning I had some delicious scrambled eggs (traded with produce from the garden) with zucchini (from the garden), mushrooms, neuf-chatel and spring onions and a side of sauteed Rose Finn Apple potatoes (also from the garden). I haven't really had to buy any vegetables from the supermarket recently (except lettuce for the piggies) and it'll be strange to be doing that again.

hottttt

Things have changed quickly to go from bloody freezing to hot as hell. In response I have been trying to water at least every second day and do that as late in the evening as possible to stop wasteful evaporation.

Last week I had lots of little helpers in the form of a horde of kids from the adjoining playground. As I opened the lock, three crowded round me begging to be allowed to water. Typical inner-city kids, they didn't know their plants (Btw, why is it that everything vaguely tall is always a "sunflower"? Today toxicfingers confused garlic with one.) Foolishly I didn't lock the gate after us, only to find the crowd suddenly swell to nine. They were a bit boisterous and overexcited - as I would have been at that age on a hot day with a waterhose - but thankfully they didn't trash the place too much and kept their fingers mostly away from the tempting strawberries in the neighbouring plots.

All this has kept me thinking about the community involvement in this garden - the plot "owners" are mainly white middle-class and middle-aged right smack-bam in the middle of a predominantly young Black and Latino area. It's also very interesting that there is a different garden not too far run by Seeds of Harmony which appears to be much more mixed in terms of ages, ethnicities, etc. And their garden looks much better. I wonder where Parks and Recreation is going wrong... maybe they should just give a plot to the horde of kids - I swear it would be the best-watered plot in the whole garden. And maybe some of them may even learn the difference between a sunflower and a tomato.

The obligatory pictures of plot progress follow. As it was already getting dark after watering they may look a bit strange. Everything is doing fine so far but lots of plants are bolting and going to seed, as expected in this hot weather.

I planted another cucumber and pepper plant. Beans are doing fine although something is eating them. If you squint you can see some carrots sprouting between the broccoli and the peppers.

Someof the collard is still recovering from being covered up.

Zucchini and patty pan squash going through a growth spurt. Just slightly concerned about the mottled-looking leaves of the zucchini - feature of the plant or first signs of mosaic virus?

The sweetcorn. I bet it feels lonely. Sigh. Maybe I should get it some companions.

more work to be done...

Have I really not posted anything for 2 weeks?!?

Last weekend and the few days preceding it was the first of hot weather (over 90 degrees) so I went to the garden nearly every day to make sure that the recently planted tomatoes and peppers would survive (not to speak of the seeds). [Note: the peppers I reported planting are "Banana" and "Nardello's", both sweet, the aubergine is "Ichiban"]

I also missed the garden clean-up on the 10th but was told afterwards that the plots on my side of the garden had been measured out wrong - mine was about 1' shorter but on the other hand nearly 1' wider. It's all to do with being able to fit a wheelbarrow down the main path but unfortunately (or luckily) I already had planted strawberries there. So they decided to exclude me for this year from that "law".

Of course, this being the Pacific Northwest, the few days of heat and sunshine were followed by buttloads of rain and cold temperatures. At least I didn't have to water anymore.

Just went out today to clear the path next to my plot, to make it easier for me to walk around my realm. It's really a shame, the plot next to me has not been taken up so the weeds are knee-high. I wonder if they have reassigned it yet...

Surprisingly not too many weeds considering, and the sprouting broccoli is doing really well. There are even little heads appearing. Collards and the shoots of the potatoes have appeared. Strawberries looking good (although with 5 plants I'm only getting a handful), trying to keep the slugs away from the fruit by sprinkling coffee grounds around them - will report if those little buggers get to them despite this measure. No sign of carrots. *sigh*

Still a little bit too cold to plant beans and zucchini but soon! But found this cool soil temperature map, that even has a 5-day forecast per region. It should be ok for the beans at least next weekend.