Getting the Garden Ready for the Heat

I've been very busy recently. Not all of it has been in the garden, but some of it has. Yesterday I got the cucumber soil blocks planted. I have 3 Armenian and 7 Diamant blocks. I also got the trellis for them put up. I have it in a really weird spot. It is against the fence in front of a path. I'm using the path end to give me more space. It is in the middle path just past the upside down trash can. OK so you can't really see it much. But trust me it is there.

As to why I have a trash can in my garden, I put the sprinkler on it when I water the garden. That way any tall foliage (like the peas) doesn't block the water. I water with an old oscillating fan sprinkler. I found out this year that it is now partially stuck. If I have it on a full sweep it gets stuck all the way to the right. Sigh. I did find I could make it not quite sweep as far and still get all but one little spot in the garden. So I hand watered that spot.

Our weather has been abnomally dry this year. In the last four weeks I think we have had just over an inch of rain. That is it. Usually we get an inch of rain a week in the spring. I've had to water three times already. Before I always hand watered. I was going to do it again, but I don't get my self sown plants that way. They are scattered willy nilly all over the garden. My cilantro was bitter last time I picked it from lack of water. So now the whole garden got wet. I hope the plants start growing again. Some of the plants were really slowing down in growth.

After the garden got a good drink it was time to mulch everything. We have a hot dry spell predicted so I have to conserve that water. I mulched the tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos. I left the middle of their beds unmulched since there are carrots germinating there. As I was mulching I noticed the first pepper bloom opened. Whoohoo!

I wanted to mulch the whole three sister's bed, but it needed to be hilled up first. The corn is anywhere from three inches high to a foot high. Afterward hilling it was much shorter. I just pulled out the little ones that obviously weren't going to grow. They would have been buried anyway. I'll put a stake in their place for the beans to grow up.

Then I mulched the low spots and the top of the hills. I left the sides unmulched because I need to plant the beans there. I'll mulch that part when the beans are well up. I think I should be planting the beans now, but I'm not really sure. The corn seems so small at about 6". Most suggestions are to wait until your corn is 6-12" tall, then hill, then plant. So I probably ought to plant about now. I'll think about it and maybe do it within the next couple of days.

I didn't do the squash hills yet. I'll do those after the spinach is out of the ground. It should bolt with the coming hot weather. So I'll pull it out when it starts, then get those hills in. The greens didn't get mulched either, but that is because they were mulched earlier. Their ground didn't need to get warmed up.

Then it was on to the perennial bed. The weeds were starting to take over. I weeded them and gave them a good mulching. I completed one side of the perennial bed along the fence and need to do the other another day. The mulch I'm using is my compost from last year. It hadn't quite decomposed enough for me to want to mix it directly in the soil. Oak leaves really take a bit to break down if they haven't been shredded beforehand and they hadn't. So there was a lot of half decomposed leaves in the mix, but it makes a great mulch.

I started to put up the supports for my container tomatoes, but I melted in the heat before I finished. It was only 80°F (27°C), but I just can't take the heat. I hope it isn't too hot tomorrow morning to get that done. I'm such a wimp in the sun, but I know enough to go inside when I start getting dizzy. I want to finish, but the plants will just have to wait. If my post seems disjointed today it is because it is brain fries along with the rest of me.

Oh and I almost forgot. My comfrey was in bloom. So I figured it must be time to cut it all down. I have three plants that I put in last year in the hopes of making more of my own mulch. This was the first time that it got cut. I used this batch to mulch my potted tomaotes.

Comfrey is Planted

Yesterday was a very busy day in the garden. My favorite part was picking the harvest. I had lots of raspberries, in fact, too many to eat on my breakfast cereal. I'll have to think about how I'm going to store them. I'll probably just freeze the extras right now since it is easy. When I get enough I'll do something more fun like ice cream.

I picked the mustard because it was bolting. I've had real trouble growing this giant red mustard. There is nothing giant about it in my garden. Of the five plants that I've put in over the weeks, three of them have wilted and died. One bolted. If you notice that one it really isn't that big. One is still hanging on, but I'm not optimistic. Its too bad. I really like the sharp flavor of the leaves. They are too strong to eat straight in this hot weather, but are good mixed into things to provide a little bite.

After the harvest, it was down to work. My Russian comfrey showed up yesterday afternoon. I've been hemming and hawing a lot about planting this. It is really a nice plant for its ability to fertilize other plants. Its roots go way down and bring up valuable minerals. I've been wanting to grow it for mulch for a while now. Currently I buy straw for mulch, but it would be nice to create at least some of my own. At the very least it is fabulous on the compost pile. Comfrey's flaw is that it tends to be invasive. It will seed itself everywhere and once the roots are there (remember they can go way down into the soil), it can be impossible to get them out again. So do I really want an invasive plant in the garden? Well I bought the blocking 14 variety that doesn't set seed. This should at least remedy one problem with it. I'll have to keep a close eye on it though to make sure it doesn't spread too far.

I decided to put it in the weird corner of the garden. I found it very hard to work in the corner since it is so sharp an angle. Before I just threw some dwarf iris there, so I wouldn't have to take care of it. Since the maple roots invade that spot, not a lot of things like to grow there. I figured that might help keep the comfrey in check. Pulling up all the iris was a chore. It hadn't been touched in about eight years. It was just a mass of iris tuber that I had to cut through to pull it out. But now you can see the after photo of my three comfrey plants. I know it looked prettier before, but hopefully they will start growing.

Then I had to compost it all. My friendly lawnmower guy left a huge pile of grass yesterday too. So I hacked up the iris tubers and I snipped all the leaves into bits to help them decay and mixed them with the grass and leaves. I'm thinking I need a machete for my next garden tool. It would have been useful. Just put it all on a block and whack it to death. I now have three compost piles (four if you count the plastic one in the garden). I can't get the vision of the Count from Sesame Street out of my head. "One compost pile; two compost piles; three compost piles; hahaha." You'd think with my kids being 19 and 21 I would have forgotten that show already. But it is programmed into my brain now.