Mar-Duke+muddy

Heat +thunderstorms this past week has lead to a whole lot of growth.   I need to harvest my bok choy and spinach already!  Its crazy.  The potatoes are also taking off.  I will need to mound them up this week.  Pretty much everything that was suffering during the cold is now turning around.  Edamame is now sprouting.  Still no corn.  Billions of weed.  I'm really glad I did landscape fabric or thick straw for must of the beds or I would have a serious mess.

Too muddy to plant today.  Many inches of rain this past week.  I did however do a bunch of weeding.  It was perfect weather for that.

I have to say I am rather freaked to be harvesting already.  I was hoping of a few weeks of doing nothing.  :)

Mar-Duke: What a difference a week makes

The weather has turned (again).  Things have warmed up to mid-fifties at night and upper seventies/low eighties during the day.  The warmth has brought things to life!

I've been working hard trying to get things in the ground.  Plot is now about 3/4 full.  I'll sum all that up later this week for now, here's whats happening.

Bok Choy:  massive growth in one week and now bolting.  :/
Peppermint celery:  about 50% size increase, very healthy looking.
Spinach and Kale.  Now actively growing and looking good.

Deadish cukes, did not come back.  Replanted (Lemon, Armenian, Burpee Hybrid and Poinsette)
Cucamelon:  Hail took it out. Drat.  replanted.

Fennel:  Improving color.  No growth yet.

Peas:  Sprouting and growing!

Beans:  Sprouting and growing!  Mostly dead beans are coming back as well.  I have too many beans.

Cauliflower:  180 turn around, no visible growth yet but much healthier looking

Purple peacock broccoli:  Growing!

Purple potatoes and Red tenderlings:  Sprouting!  Man potatoes sure have pretty foliage

Tomatoes:  all are in the ground.  No losses.  No visible growth yet.  Looking less beaten up however.

Peppers:  Looking good, blossoms are starting.

Winter squash with smushed stem:  Still alive and still green.  It proves that I cannot kill plants I don't enjoy eating.

Cantalope, watermelon, zukes, butternut.  Planted today.

Popcorn seeds:  No sign of life yet

Popcorn plants:  Look terrible, sort of shrively as if they got hit with a herbacide.

Radishes:  growing slowly.  Fighting through weeds

Carrots:  sprouting I think.

Onions:  growing and looking good!

Artichoke:  1 happy 1 pouty

Eggplant:  1 happy, 1 pouty

I'm starting to meet my allotment neighbors.  Its fun seeing what other people are doing.  This has been a lot of hard work getting it all in, even with no till but I am close to seeing light at the end of the tunnel with respect to the hard stuff.  Well other than the hauling of the water.  Fingers crossed for Rain every 3 days of approximately 3/4 of an inch.  ;)

Weekend Gardening Blitz: Mar-Duke

Gack look at all those dandelion seeds off to the right!

I took Friday off to go hard core at the planting at Mar-Duke.  I had great plans that by the end of the weekend I would be done and could relax and watch things grow.  Ha!
All I can say is man I am slow.  I spent 8 hours on Friday, 6 on Saturday and another 8 on Sunday and I am only about 1/2 way done with filling up my plot space.  I also can barely move. 

I think it is the weeding part that is slowing me down.  The plot has a lot of grass in it with very deep roots.  Type A person that I am, I have been slowly picking--yes picking through each area to dig up and dispose of the grass.  Most of my neighbors are Mar-Duke are just rototilling.  No till philosophies aside.  I'm not sure about that approach.  Chopping these roots up just makes more grass sprouts to grow.  It will be interesting to see how it all compares in a month or so. 

OK so what we in the ground this weekend? 
Strawberry popcorn
8 tomato plants (more to go)
watermelon radish
two towers of pea
1 bean teepee
purple cauliflower
orange cauliflower
2 artichokes
2 strips of Romance carrots
purple potatoes
pink tenderling potatoes
some borage, dill, basil and marigolds, nasturium seeds, sunflowers
cukes (replacements for the two lemon cukes that croaked from last week.)
4 sweet peppers.  Bit cool for these but we will see what happens.
leeks
candy onions
spanish utah onions
Shiso-red Perillo
raddichio
purple peacock broccoli
Red Russian kale
mustard greens

Rain is now forecast for the next three days, so I am going to concentrate on pond plantings and the yard veggies for the next few days.
Sorry for the terrible pictures.  I will get some closer ones next time.

Week of April 25: Pond Start up and Mar-Duke post Rain

The week has been rainy and cold.  Not that misty rain that one thinks of when one thinks of spring.  No this was multiple days of downpours.  Very very cold downpours.  Wind chill yesterday was 36 degrees in the 2" down pour.

Needless to say, there was no real planting that went on this week.  Oh I tried today.  I went out to scope out the allotment.  I even took the shovel out of the car and make a few half hearted swings with it.  It wasn't happening.  Moving with tens pounds of goo on your boots is hard and getting the goo to fall nicely off the shovel without destroying your soil structure just doesn't happen after that much rain.  So Mar-Duke was a wash this weekend.  One thing I did note though was geese.  Lots and lots of geese wandering around and yanking out plants.  I was glad for my three sided fence.  My plot so no evidence of geese or other traffic through it.  I will need to make it a four sided fence soon.  The other thing of note was that the fence saw 30 knots of wind this week and held.  That's good news.

I did have some productivity in the pond arena.  I got the bog filter and waterfall filter box cleared out of winter sludge and got the pump connected and flowing.  This is good timing for this.  I have not been feeding the fish regularly because the water is still too cold but I suspect that will change soon.  I need the bacterial filtration established some before feeding resumes.  That requires temperatures about 40 degrees and I have that.  I also want the water moving to prevent any  mosquitoes from hatching.  Mosquitoes do not like moving water.

I took a few swipes of the leaf net at the bottom of the pond just now to see how bad it was.  Verdict was BAD.  There are probably about 500 pounds of wet leaves down there.  The methane smell when you pull them off the bottom can give you a headache right away.  This will be a project I will tackle in spurts.  When the water is this cold, the koi's immune system is not up to par.  I only want to disturb a little bit of water at a time so keep their conditions as decent as possible.  It is important to get this off the bottom though.  I can host a whole lot of bad bacteria an parasites and with the ducks hanging out here again this spring who knows what is being brought in.  Here  is a picture of the pond this afternoon.

Mar-Duke Farms Allotment: Day 1

About a week ago, the community garden opened up for planting!  I immediately drove to check it out and got very excited.  The amount of space I have rented is a nice size and the soil looks nice with minimal weeds.  This past weekend I spent about ten hours on getting it ready.  Looking at it above it sure doesn't look like it!

The first issue was the fencing.  I used green snow fence type netting attached to purchased plastic coated metal plant stakes.  It lasted all of about 45 minutes before our winds started, caught the fabric and bend the poles down to the ground.  Sigh.  Plan B it is.

After removing the above mangled poles I went and purchased some coated steel ones.  Then on the two sides of the garden where I was less concerned about human invasion I lowered the netting down a foot in a half in height.  Big winds again last night and it is still holding.  It took hours to do but will be worth it.  This community garden has a lot of geese traffic and I don't want them in their pooping and ripping out plants. I am also trying to minimize human theft as there is a public parking lot behind the bushes on the right.  I really do like my space though.  The grassy area off to the side gets shade and is a nice place to rest.  Most of the other plots have zero shade anywhere near them.  I do have to walk a bit to haul water but, its exercise!

Once I got the fencing up, I started getting  some plants in the ground.  It took a long time.  Mostly because my muscles and body were not ready for all that digging.  I completed 2 beds that were roughly 4x4 and 1 bed that is 4x6.  I did not til.  Rather I added some organic fertilizer and gypsum to the surface plus some compost.  Then dug up around the sides to mound it up and then wiggled the amendments in a bit.  I am seeing some worm traffic which was encouraging but virtually no organic material which was not.  So I am working to fix that.

In Bed one I planted Peppermint celery seedlings I started in February,  Chinese Kale, Beet seeds and two kinds of spinach (Monteux and one other I forgot the name of)  In bed 2 I planted red cabbage, purple peacock broccoli and I forgot what else.  In the big bed I planted fennel off by itself because all the plants hate fennel, watermelon radishes and two kinds of cuke (lemon and Poinsett). 

The day I planted was really warm 80's.  I was shocked how few people were actually out getting things ready.  I suspect many in this area follow the last anticipated frost date to the letter which in my opinion is silly.  There is plenty that does fine with chilly temps.  Of course the day after planting temps dropped to the 40's and it started raining.  Everything will be fine.  The cukes are in their wall of waters and everything else does not mind the chilly.  I have a lot of plants I need to get in the ground now from sprouted seedlings.  I'm happy for the 2" of rain we have gotten but fingers crossed it starts warming up.  I have strawberry popcorn to plant!  Goal tomorrow is get the pond filtration running so I can focus on my new allotment plantings all weekend.  Here is a close-up of the planted beds so far with their leaf mulch blanket.