Slowing Down in the Fall Garden

It's been a long time since I posted!  That garden bed I talked about in the last post is now finished, mulched, and has a bunch of little plants (sacrificial lambs) poking out of it!  More on that later, though.

(Mostly) Fall garden

Here's what the community garden plot looks like right now.  There are still three tomato plants, though they are definitely on their way out.  The watermelon vine, freed from the shade of the gazillion basil plants and the exuberant buttercup squash vine, is trying to produce three more fruits in the waning daylight.  Peppers are ripening left and right, and the bean plants are beginning to dry out.  I still have summer squash plants in the front bed, mostly just because I prefer that to bare soil - production has pretty much stopped.  I mulched the older carrots with shredded tree leaves, and am looking forward to picking them well into the winter.  The first round of lettuce (that light green strip at the very back) is already trying to go to seed, so I've been picking quite a bit of that, plus there are three more planting rounds that I expect will keep maturing throughout the winter.  There are a few heads of cabbage that I think will finish before winter, and several more (plus a lot of broccoli) that will probably not be ready until spring.  Anyone want some basil?  We still have a few plants that I just don't know what to do with.  I planted some parsley where the buttercup squash was, though I'm not really sure if it will make it through the winter, being planted so late.  I just miss having parsley in the garden so much.  (N practically clucks at me every time we have to do anything as ridiculous as buy parsley.  I really have to pay more attention to herbs next spring.)

I have mostly been cleaning up lately.  Now that there are fewer daylight hours and the days are getting cooler, I am starting to catch up with the weeds.  I decided to renew the great cardboard project - I've covered about 90% of the paths with cardboard and wood chips, which I hope will last well into next summer.  In the process I've weeded most of the beds at least a little, and removed many of the plant stems and branches that were leaning into the paths.  All in all, the garden is looking much tidier. 

I think I will probably add a path along the right side of the plot, where the park service turned over a whole plot to "community space", with a picnic table and regularly cut weeds.  Technically the path will be in the community plot, but I think it will be a relief to the gentlemen who trim the grass to have a little buffer zone between them and my garden.  They always leave the weeds right at the edge uncut (truly, I do appreciate their consideration), which means I have to either trim them or let them shed seeds on my garden beds - mulching a strip seems easier.  If I have enough time before the weather turns I'll try to build a small bed over there, too, where gardeners can plant/pick at their leisure.  Well...we'll see if that happens or not.  ;)

R and I planted a round of garlic on the first - Inchelium Red.  I had three large bulbs, which provided only enough cloves to fill about 1/3 of the space I have designated for garlic next year.  I want to fill the rest of the space with cloves I harvested this year, but I am a little concerned about them.  When the papers are removed they have what look like tiny little pimples on the surface, which the internet tells me means nematodes.  Nematodes are tiny little worms that live in the soil and feed on the roots and/or bulbs of many, many different plants.  Most likely my entire community garden plot is infested with them, but I think I will still try heat-treating the cloves before I plant them.  Supposedly soaking the cloves in warm water destroys the nematodes so that they don't infest the soil of the new garlic bed.  Assuming it isn't already infested.

Well, this post is getting long, so I think I'll sign off and write more another time.  Hope all is well with all of you and your garden clean-up (or gear-up) is going well.

Again, Shaela?

New garden bed under costruction

Last year when I first started working in my community garden plot I told the other gardeners that I had to get a plot because N wouldn't let me dig up any more grass.  I was really only half joking.  N likes grass, even our scaggly, patchy grass that doesn't get any fertilizer or water or sun.  Maybe that's why I didn't really ask before digging up our side yard...

The garden bed I put in the backyard a few years ago just gets less sun every year, thanks to my neighbor's incredible, exuberant tree, and I have decided to exchange some of that land (seeded back to grass) for a sunnier spot on the opposite side of the house.  I turned over the sod in the new space, laid down many sheets of paper/cardboard, then moved the top two inches of soil off of the old garden and put it on the new.  (I worked hard building that soil, and moving it made the old garden level with the adjacent lawn.)  I didn't have enough soil to really cover the new space, so I put some of my recently-finished compost on there as well.  Then I covered all of it with the remaining wood chips from my driveway.  (Hooray!  We have a driveway again!)  Between now and next spring the weather and soil life should be able to break down the sod clumps and paper and leave me with a nice, soft, crumbly, humusy soil.  Ha ha ha ha!  Okay, I know better than that, but it will probably be diggable.

Perhaps the liberated driveway was some solace to N when he came home and found me, covered in the evidence of my misdeeds.  He is a patient and understanding man.



N took the news well, probably partly because I used the last of the mulch from the driveway to cover the new bed for winter.

The Great Cardboard Project

Between holidays the boys and I have been trekking out to the community garden, weather permitting, to have a look around, play a bit in the adjacent soccer field, and continue work on the Great Cardboard Project.  It is astonishing to me how long this is taking.  My plan was to take the top inch or two of soil off the ground that will be paths next year, throw it onto the growing beds, cover the paths with cardboard, and cover the cardboard with some loose mulch like shredded leaves, or hay.  The cardboard would help to warm the soil while smothering weeds, and the mulch would help keep the cardboard in place and give us a nice, dry surface to walk on.  Meanwhile I'd be adding some nice topsoil to the beds and improving their drainage.  (Plants need moisture, but they also need air pockets in the soil for proper root function, so a freely draining soil is good.)  Hopefully I'd also be discouraging kid feet from landing in my growing beds.

I thought I could knock this out in a couple good hour-long visits to the plot.  Let's just say, it's taken longer than I expected.  The boys and I put in some good quality time this week digging up more of the paths, spreading more cardboard, and covering them with whatever dry materials I could find laying around the garden.  It's about 1/3 done, so I've got a ways to go, but it's looking much more respectable. 

Some semi-prepared paths and growing beds

In the process of doing this I pulled out a lot of the dried-up weeds from last year and found...holes!  Something has been burrowing in my garden!  I'm thinking it's either mice or snakes.  Probably mice, but I'm really conscious of the snakes now.  Besides the live one I encountered last fall, I also found a skeletonized snake head trapped in my bird netting when I took down last year's bean trellis.  (It was not just the skin, I swear.)  I'm hoping the burrows belong to mice and the removal of their concealment will cause them to either move over to the empty plot next door, or be eaten.  Mostly I'm hoping they'll be eaten.

I Overdid It

Yesterday was our first cool, dry day in months, so I decided to get a little work done outside.

First, I moved my highly effective squirrel cage and pulled out my dead tomato plants, and R helped me pick up the rocks I had put around the bottom and put them in a bucket. (This was fun to him, I suppose, because afterwards he threw many of them back out so he could pick them all up again!) Then I trimmed/pulled the weeds, grass and ivy growing through the fence next to the tomato bed.













I also raked the paths back into some semblance of order, and mulched them. This sounds simple, but my mulch bin was completely buried behind the remains of a 10-foot volunteer tree I hacked down by my back fence. It was time to take care of that anyway, so I cut all the branches off, bundled them, and set them out front for public works to take away. (I'm a bit concerned, though, after looking at some of the branch piles around my neighborhood this past week, that I may be low on their priority list after these big storms we've been having.)


Then, since I was having such a good time, I moved about four full wheelbarrows of mulch and distributed them around my yard. I didn't quite need all of it, but I wanted to use the rest of that bin up so I could pick it up. The bin I removed was about twice the size of the one you see in the background, partly because the chicken wire had started to give in and the whole pile was falling off the platform N. built for it to rest on.


That bin had been there for more than a year and a massive system of tree roots had grown in and was consuming the chicken wire. This tree and I have done battle before, but never quite like this. One of the root segments I pulled out was taller than I am! Here's a picture of the pile of roots I left behind.


I didn't quite need all the mulch from the bin, so I decided to finish moving my compost pile and get a new one started with the grass/weed clippings from my garden. I mixed the leftover mulch into the old compost, heavily laced with coffee grounds from this past week.


Some of you will have long since figured out that I am procrastinating finishing chapter four of my thesis.... thank goodness it was rainy today!

Weird Bug - Grub?

Behind my shed I have a pile of shredded tree branches that I bought from the city last year. I had about an extra cubic yard of material so I threw it in a chicken wire cylinder and let it sit. I went to get some out last weekend to lay down a thin layer on my garden paths, and found several of these little guys hiding in there. (Sorry, I know the photo is not that good. It is just a little shorter than my little finger, but all curled up. Definitely didn't look like it belongs above ground.)

Is this the famous lawn grub? Should I be worried about it killing my grass? My trees? I left three of them on my garden paths and I'm pretty sure some birds came and ate them. Or did they?