Saturday chores

At last, an almost entirely free day to get a bunch of stuff done in the garden. I had a long list that I'd been adding to all week, and I was anxious to get to it. First I had to go play membership chair at our local neighborhood pool, and then I had to give the house a cursory clean, which is a standing Saturday morning chore. Kate and I had an emergency trip to Target for a sundress to wear to a 'fashion' party. Then at last I could get outside.

First, I took a handheld rake and loosened the crust of chicken manure in the raised beds. Then I fertilized all the vegetables. I do believe the nitrogen boost is helping - the paste tomatoes have put out fruit, and the bush beans have beautiful purple blossoms.

Then I added dirt to the potatoes - they're growing a lot every day.

The yellow in this picture is not a potato bloom, it's a poppy behind the potatoes. I'll post a picture of the potato flowers when they arrive.

Then I added lots of late summer/early fall blooming flower seeds to the garden. The way I do this is fill a bucket with soil, add all the seeds to the bucket, mix it all together, and then broadcast them in the garden. This method always seems to promote germination, since the seeds have a little good dirt to start them out with. I included cosmos, rudibeckias, and zinnias, hoping for late-season bee forage.

Kate has a little garden by the back door, in which she had planted calendula, violas, primroses, lettuces, and a lantana. The lettuces and calendula were spent, and a lot of the violas and primroses didn't make it. So I cleared that bed out today and added seeds of alyssum, spinach, and more romaine.

Then I cleared out the peas and the carrots. There were a lot of carrots to harvest, but the peas were done fruiting. I pulled everything out, Tom cleaned up the bamboo trellis and took it apart for storage, and I did some light tilling of that bed. Then I dug out some compost from the bin. I got a good bucketful from one side.

I added it to the former pea/carrot bed and tilled it in lightly. Then I planted my sweet potato slips, which look great.

It's hot enough for them now, outside. They will get large and their vines will cover the entire 4x4 bed, but I might get some marigolds for the edges, while they fill out.

Then Tom and I tackled the catalpa tree. It's been excellent forage for the bees, you can stand under it and listen to the buzzing, but it was overgrown and shading too much of the raised bed area. So we hacked off some branches.

There's still a lot of blooming flowers on the tree, and they should last for another couple of days or so.

The butterfly bushes are blooming, the sticky monkey flower is going great, sunflowers are reaching for the sun, and I have a few mathilde poppies blooming right now. Another beautiful coffin for a dead bee:

I never used to find dead bees in my garden, but now I see one nearly every day in a flower. For some silly reason, it comforts me to see them so peaceful, being rocked in the breeze in a beautiful blossom.

We opened the hive today; the bees seem to have plenty of room, and there is plenty of brood. Still not a lot of honey. Later, I noticed them acting kind of funny, a lot of them flying around buzzing loudly, not sure what was going on. Many of them still 'beard' outside the hive when it's hot, and a small clump seem to like sleeping outside on the landing board, all grouped up. It's the wrong time of year for a swarm, so I'm not sure what made them so agitated this afternoon, but they seemed to have calmed down now.

I still need to wash the carrots, but once I do that and have an iced coffee, I'm headed for a dip in the pool. First, a snack, from the garden:

Wild Plums

I've never been much of a forager, but this morning whilst walking in the open space, I came across several wild plum trees. The first one had tiny, quarter-sized red plums.

I saw some littering the ground, split open with juice, and wondered if they were ripe? So I picked one and ate it. These little one-bite fruits were seriously delicious. I gathered a handful.

I continued walking and came across a yellow plum tree.

I tasted one of these (had to reach a little higher for them) and it was perfect, firm-skinned on the outside, and run-down-your-chin juicy on the inside. I wanted to gather some of these too, but all I had was an unused poop bag. So in they went.

I brought them home for my breakfast. Delicious!

The Great Nitrogen Experiment

So the time has come to bring out the big guns. I didn't want to use fertilizer, other than compost or manure, but if I'm going to save the new garden beds, I need to resort to larger measures. I've been struggling with the question: Is it more important that I bring a crop to harvest? Or that I used all-natural methods doing so? Yeah, I tussled with it. And then I decided the expense of the beds and the seeds and our labor, is worth a little store-bought help. I went out this morning before work and purchased a high-nitrogen fertilizer, made from seaweed.

This stuff could be the devil, for all I know. I just had to know that I tried everything before I gave up on this year's harvest. And this is what the lady at the expensive boutique garden store recommended. I purposely went to a store where I knew the people had their own gardens, and had a lot of knowledge about growing food. When asked, what would you buy for your own beds?, she waffled between two products, mostly because of expense. I chose the expensive one; it was $10 a pound.

It comes in granular form.

It then dissolves into water and forms a lovely green slurry. A little smelly, but in a pleasant low-tide sort of way.

Then I watered everything thoroughly, using up about half the can of fertilizer.

Here's some corn, with a pole bean behind. The corn grew quickly to this size, and then stopped - it's been like this for a month. I took a picture today, and I'll take another in a week. Together, we will see if the high nitrogen fertilizer makes a difference.

Meanwhile, the hills are drier and crunchier every day, which is why I'm so amazed when I come across things growing in a place where I think no thing could possibly grow. Take, for instance, this wild chamomile:

A pretty little thing, but how in the world does it survive in this dry, hard clay? No one is putting seaweed fertilizer on it. When I see this, I have hope for my vegetables.

Meanwhile, I consulted a bee expert (my dad) on why the bees hang out on the outside of the hive every day. It has been warm, but I've never seen so many bees chilling on the porch on any other hive. Also, a clump of them has been overnighting outside, on the side. A nice view of the stars, but isn't it too cold? I wondered. Dad advised me to add many more bars to the hive and give the bees plenty of room. I'm worried about them expending so much energy in building comb, but the hive WAS pretty crowded. We'll see if the extra room allows it to stay cooler in there, and give the bees more space. Today they are outside the hive as usual, but it is again quite warm.

So, some experimenting here at Poppy Corners. It'll be interesting to see how it all turns out.

Quiet

Things have been quiet at Poppy Corners, at least in the garden. The kids are super busy with end-of-school-year projects and events, in my first grade classroom we're counting down the days to the last day of school, and even Tom can breathe a sigh of relief as the college gears down for summer, when all the administrators can finally get some work done. We've had band concerts and musicals and special rite of passage projects and auditions for the opera and exciting, hectic times. The neighborhood pool opened, which means a daily swim wedged in there somewhere, and the house smells of sunscreen and chlorine.

But in the garden, it's been quiet. The days are warming up and lengthening, the trees are in full leaf, we're getting at least a few strawberries and blueberries every day now. The peaches are getting big and should be starting to ripen mid-June, I can't wait until my first peach smoothie. We're getting carrots every few days and the last of the spring peas.

The potatoes I was worried about are overflowing their cage - the shoots and leaves are strong, huge, and growing a lot every day. The asparagus has put out more spears and has 'fronded' - is that a word? - it's all big and ferny. The sweet potato slips are growing, putting up leaves. The herb spiral looks great, and I'm harvesting herbs from that frequently. I've found I really like sorrel mixed in with my daily greens in my morning frittata.

But there's lots of questionable things going on in the new raised beds, and I fear we may not have much of a crop this first year. The manure has helped. But several vegetables still look sickly and are not growing properly. I planted more corn in the bed which had the lettuces and cilantro. I figure if the lettuces finally take off (doubtful now it's getting hot), and the corn actually grows, they can hang out together for a little while. The pumpkins I planted have germinated and look pretty good, and the pole beans which were supposed to grow on corn are taking over said corn, so I'll have to figure out a trellising system for those.

The cherry and slicing tomatoes are going gangbusters, but the paste tomatoes are in the new beds look very sad, and my dreams of canning lots of tomato paste are fading.

In the flower garden, sunflowers are growing up up up. I'm hoping some summer seeds of cosmos will germinate for the bees. In fact I need to plant a bunch of summer flowers for the bees, as their forage opportunities are definitely coming to an end. We opened the hive yesterday, and everything looks good - but the rate at which they are building new comb has definitely slowed, and we didn't even add another bar. They are making lots of bee babies but not a lot of honey. I didn't expect to harvest any honey this year for our own use, but I am concerned that they won't have enough even for themselves through winter. I look at my neighborhood with a different eye - what will bloom in the months ahead? Right now the bees are collecting from my catalpa tree, and any leftover spring poppies, lupines, wisterias. In June, there are two Chinese Tallow trees nearby which always attract lots of bees. In July, the sunflowers might sustain them. But what happens in August? And the driest, most arid months in Fall? I have to plant now to have forage for them, then. And I have to plant a lot. Masses of the same few flowers. So I've been researching late summer/early fall bloomers, that are loved by honeybees, and trying to figure out how to pay for a huge quantity of them.

Some branch trimming is to be done by me today in the back garden. Our apple tree is being quite shaded out by our flannel bush (which is much larger than the apple tree), so I need to cut back the flannel bush, now it's done blooming. But it's called flannel bush for a reason - the leaves are covered with tiny fine hairs which come off when bushed against - and it itches like crazy. I have to do it right before we go jump in the pool, or I'll go crazy with itching. Guess I'll be trimming branches in my swimming suit!

Baby robin, and chicken manure

I guess I have a strange talent for finding injured creatures, because today, whilst walking the dog in the open space, I came across a baby bird on the ground. Just sitting there, not moving, but bright-eyed and aware. As I approached it, two large robins, I'm assuming mom and dad, gathered in the walnut tree above me and hollered. So I walked away and watched for a bit. Nothing happened. I couldn't just leave the bird there, so I went and made a nest of dead grass in the crook of the tree. Then I lifted the baby robin into the makeshift nest, with mom and dad squawking at me all the while, and walked away again. I waited a minute, then walked back. The bird had stood up and walked to another side of the little crook, so at least I know it could walk.

It was the most adorable little thing, and it killed me to walk away for good, but I did, because mom and dad were there, and interested. I'm never sure how much to intervene. I hope the baby will be ok.

My vegetable beds are full of injured creatures - the plants. I'm really not sure what is happening. I'm talking about the raised beds we just built, which are above the sheet mulch. Everything germinated, and then stopped growing. Just stopped. And then started yellowing. First I thought it was a water issue, so I've been watering every day. Then I wondered if maybe filling the beds with straight compost was a good idea - though I've always done that before - I mean, we have clay dirt here, adding a lot of organic matter has always worked before. Then I began to suspect that the sheet mulching was the problem. Either the roots weren't working their way through the mulch, or the mulch we used was the wrong kind - I just didn't know.

Needing a more experienced opinion, I decided to consult my friend the biologist, who works for the USDA. And he told me the most obvious thing, and I was smacking my head in my hand while we were talking - of course! The nitrogen in the compost is bound up in the process of decomposing the mulch which is underneath it. I knew this! I have always known not to mix mulch into dirt, because it robs the plants of nitrogen. If you just lay it on top of the earth, it's ok. But mixing is bad, at least short term. And here I had put a foot of compost on top of the mulch, expecting the plants to be fine! Argh!

The biologist and I talked about how different composts have different nitrogen levels, which I hadn't realized, but of course it makes sense. So he told me to add a bunch of manure on top of the soil, all around the plants. I researched which kind of manure has the most nitrogen, and everything I read said that chicken poop was the winner, so I bought 8 bags of composted chicken manure and spread it on the garden today.

Believe me when I tell you, I smell bad.

I much prefer cow or horse poop, to be honest.

But if it mends my veg, I'm all in! I'll keep you posted.