June 24, 2008

Well, it must be summer.  Nice weather and I'm stuck in the office working insane hours.  /sigh  Let's hope my garden is working for me back at home. 

I know my lettuce is doing great.  At least the stuff that's not bolting.  Again, thank goodness for succession planting.  I've got great greens to replace the ones that are bolting.  It's amazing.  That spinach ladder I showed you yesterday? Well it may not be as visually pronounced, but all three lettuces have squares like that where there are baby plants, newly edible plants and leggy bolting plants.  Very cool!

Well, about all I got to do today was water and fluff my compost since I didn't get home until almost nine.  This morning before work I watered my potatoes because I don't normally go to that area of the yard after work and I don't want the dirt to dry out since the flowering started, signaling the formation of potatoes if I recall correctly.  Since I watered a few days ago I wasn't sure how moist it was deep in the BAYG bin, but when I started flooding the bin, something very cool happened.  Water started leaking out from between the bottom layer of wood.  That's a good sign that not only is Mel's Mix draining well, but it's retaining moisture as advertised.  YAY!  There's hope for my potatoes yet!

This evening when I watered my garden, I found the pole beans have grown another foot (close), I've got more peas to harvest, and I've got to plant more radishes and other veggies.  I think more spinach in another bed is in order since I've found leaf miners on the young sprouts. GRRR.  However, I purposely didn't look at the cauliflower because I want to be surprised at it's growth by only looking at it once a week, hehe.

I tell you the corn is really liking the warm weather we're having. The stalks are getting thicker and growing finally.  However, the only chance of them being knee high by the fourth of July is if I count the 16 inch beds in the calculation, hehe.  This is Seattle after all.

Finally I took a pitch fork to the compost bin.  Where I could reach with my thermometer showed 130 max so It was time.  Mostly I got to the point where I was throwing the pitch fork as deep into the pile as I could, twisting it and pulling it out to fluff it up.  It was working well.  Unfortunately I got a bit too close to the side of the bin and threw my hand into the edge of the wood pallet.  I don't know what hurts worse, the half square inch cut that pealed the skin off my knuckle or the bruse I'm sure to get where I hit the board, hehe.  Actually it doesn't hurt that bad, it's just silly.

Sorry no pics today, I couldn't think of anything creative and forgot my phone inside when I changed out of my work clothes.

Hehe, I almost forgot, I have pole and bush beans soaking in the kitchen. I've got to transfer them to damp coffee filters and baggies for the top of the fridge.  Funny thing is that when I ran out of Jade bush beans (I went through a whole package trying to get 4 SF to grow), my brother gave me some spare Blue Lake 47 bush beans.  When I got my pole beans out to soak them, I realized that they're Blue Lake also.  So I'm doinig Blue Lake bush and pole beans.  Hope the bush beans intermix well with Jade.

Enjoy your garden!