After ripping out the onions last week, the bed has just been sitting there. I should have planted the kale right away, but I just didn't get to it. I've been feeling lazy recently. There were weeds in the bed. One of the weeds was some alpine strawberries. So I transplanted those out to the front yard on Monday.
Sadly my laziness also let my kale plants dry out enough to badly wilt. Watering did bring them back, but I know better than to do that. I'm really not good at watering every day.
So I finally got my act in gear yesterday and planted up the kale. Only four of the Winterbor were doing well, so most of it is Scotch Curly Kale. The later tends to survive the winter better here, but the former puts out a lot more kale rapa to eat in the spring. I much prefer to have them half and half.
The bed is not just going to have kale. I sowed some cilantro down the middle for fall harvests. Once I find my mache seed (where did it go?). I'm going to under plant it with that.
And since I've been ignoring my gardening duties, which includes dead heading the coneflowers, I was rewarded with a goldfinch coming to eat the seeds. Sometimes it pays off being a lazy gardener. I had to take the photo through my back window as when I tried to go outside it would always fly off. A Downy Woodpecker visited my sunflower yesterday too. Then the Cardinals came to visit. It is nice seeing some of the other birds besides European sparrows. There are flocks of those in the neighborhood, but not a lot of other variety.
We are soon to have a few empty beds ourselves as I'll be pulling out what is dead or gone and overseeding for the winter. The only birds we want to see are Purple Martins as they eat the gnats around us. They as thick here in the summer.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about being lazy - I have been planning on sowing my carrots for almost a week now and I keep getting sidetracked by other stuff and putting it off. If my carrots don't mature in time, I really will have no one to blame but myself...
ReplyDeleteI have goldfinch eat cone flowers, black-eyed susans and more. I purposely don't deadhead those because the birds like them.
ReplyDeleteI have an old garden bed I let go to seed. Birds love the seeds and also the dry stems for nest building.
DeleteI think it is okay to be lazy once in awhile. You are usually on top of things and work very hard on your garden. Nice to have different birds visit. Nancy
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty little bird - not one that we get in the UK,
ReplyDeleteYour Goldfinches are much more colorful than the ones here, they are so pretty. I don't have coneflowers for them to munch on, but they do enjoy cleaning out the seeds in my rosemary.
ReplyDeleteI'm not growing any kale this year. I'm concentrating on PSB and Brussels sprouts instead.
ReplyDeleteOur Goldfinches are nowhere near as brightly coloured as yours. Yours looks more like a Canary!!