For a the better part of most days for the last couple of months, this, the return view from dropping off Monday CSA shares, has been the Weather. Cloud and rain. There are occasional sunny days. I haven’t been keeping accurate count, but that can’t be far off. We’ve several times enjoyed 2″ (5cm) of rain in a week. I haven’t thought about hoses in weeks, except when moving them out of the way to mow down prolifically multiplying weeds on the garden paths. On the way to the Saturday farmers’ market, I barely glance at the pond to check the level (the pond is out of the way down near the highway, most easily seen when driving by). This summer, water has not been a problem!
Month: July 2008
More carrots
Wouldn’t DREAM of starting carrots without the burlap method now. Maria and Lynn remove burlap from the third planting of the season, using the fold and fold again approach rather than rolling it up…
Beans and big weeds
Hand pulling big weeds is a regular garden feature this summer of rainy, weed-favoring weather. In the before and after, the second and third plantings of snap beans (Jade and Indy Gold) are disappearing under soaring lamb’s quarters and pigweed: a couple of hours and a couple of pairs of hands later and they’re looking good.
Digging garlic
Considering that our clayey soil has hardly had a chance to dry out with all the rain, this year’s garlic is looking good. With Lynn digging away, the first third of the garlic patch is up and stacked to dry in the barn. I’d been worried about rotting (and Con at the market had already reported losing a lot of his to rot), and checking every couple of days for the last two weeks. Maybe 20% of the bulbs are soaked and come up pinkish-brown—dunno how they’ll look when they dry out, but the cloves are fine, so it’s lots of home use and seed garlic at the worst…
Massive new potatoes
Our first potatoes of the year are HUGE, some of the biggest potatoes I’ve grown by far. I guess they really liked the rain. First dug: Yukon Gold and Chieftain. As usual, the harvest method is as manual as it gets: crawling along the rows, pulling up the plants, and scrabbling around by hand. More fun in the mud…
Rinsing…
On-going debates about the merits of rinsing are…academic right now as the near daily rains continue, and the soil remains between moist and mucky. Even on a rare hot and sunny day like today, crops are coming up caked in mud. Carrots are messy…
…and so are green onions (being rinsed by Mike) with tangled roots that hold clumps of mud so well…
