Dabney Garden Blog

And since I did check the weather yesterday for the first time in ever, I’ve got everything in a water-tight box or under our tarp except for, I think, a single pair of gloves and freshly-picked up coffee grounds in the wheelbarrow.  I even managed to get the seed beans brought in.  I’m sure we’re going to have to drain the composters when it stops raining, but that’s okay.

Next step: dash out and turn off the watering system. How sustainable is that? (Turning off watering due to rain? Impossible! says Caltech/Pasadena.)

Oh yeah, and I planted the arugula this morning. 

The major revelation for the weekend is that hose-end-fixers work great, so we can use our cut-up/broken hoses to make patch hoses of appropriate length. These will be less likely to be cut up, and they’ll keep our long hoses out of the fray.  And the place already looks a lot neater, which is important to Caltech if not to us.

Now for the bad news… Some of the tomatoes came down with an aggressive powdery mildew.  Val and I pulled three plants and collected a couple of handfuls of little green tomatoes to pickle.  We pruned and checked the other plants, and they seem to be okay.  Going to need to keep pruning and checking, though. Val asserts, and the internet corroborates, that powdery mildew is a Very Bad Thing for tomatoes.

And now back to your regularly scheduled good news!  Non-science compost is warm, and science compost and upright compost got a coffee infusion.  I’m going to get a little more coffee, and then maybe quit for a while.  (MORE COFFEE THAN YOUR GARDEN HAS ROOM FOR!)

We also planted ten potatoes in that back corner.  See Theoretical Eating Chart.

I’ve got a big list of things that need to get done sooner or later:

• mulch tomatoes and maybe others
• squirrel cage for eggplant
• plant arugula
• weed (always…)
• keep mixing that shitty bit
• look at the long white (crappy) hose– can we make two patch hoses?
• build worm home
• keep checking the tomatoes

Obviously a lot of sooner and a lot of later.  We’ll see how it goes.

I spoke to Mike Raven yesterday about having a trash can installed on the Dabney balcony, so maybe people won’t throw so much trash into the garden.  I also cleaned up a lot of trash (on the order of a wheelbarrow-full!), including a lot of our own trash and a pile of sun-melted gloves.  It sucks that we have to clean up balcony trash, but this made me realize how much of the fault is ours.  The place is marginally more presentable now.

I’m going to look into getting a water-tight/spider-proof storage box, so we don’t lose anything else to neglect or the coming rainy season.  This would also let us keep work materials in the garden instead of in someone’s room, so they’ll be more accessible.

Dude, we planted the daikon radishes Monday, and they are already coming up (four days later).  

Solid.

Well, almost.  See the updated Fall Planting Map for details.  Val and I put in a row of snow peas and one of kohlrabi this morning, and I planted some daikon along the north-south sides of the bean patch (between the beans; see signs) and one little row within the patch (again, see sign).  We’re planning to put in potatoes and arugula, and to move some more of the squash over to the herb patch.  Prior to planting the peas and kohlrabi, we worked about 40 pounds of coffee grounds into the soil, so hopefully the little plants should be happy.

Our old compost orb is totally hot.  Science compost needs more green. It will receive coffee grounds. 

The new green hose running the automagic watering of the snow peas and kohlrabi belongs to Blacker.  I’m going to buy us another hose, possibly tomorrow, and give it back.  We have at least 4 non-working busted leaky hoses.  Seriously guys, quit mowing the hoses.

Beef & veggie stew using onions and beans from the garden.  Not that you can really tell that from the photo, but isn’t it cool?

Tons of people showed up this weekend, and we got some things done– pruned the tomatoes and moved squash out of the allium patch and a strawberry out of the tomatoes.  Also did some mulching around the newly respectable tomato patch.  Val watered the mulch, and it turns out mulch doesn’t absorb water– we had a wheelbarrow full of mulch soup.  Even though the middle layer was dusty. Weird.  

I sprayed the squash with 10% skim milk again, and there is so far no sign of powdery mildew.  However, I’ve noticed that some of the tiny plants often have dirt on their leaves in the morning, so I’m worried that the watering system is spraying them.  (Keeping the leaves dry prevents the mildew spores from sprouting, another good prevention strategy.)

We also attempted to make science compost in a new black orb, using layered browns and greens, old compost for bacteria, and compost starter / helper thing. Most of the green we had today was coffee grounds from Red Door, and it looks like we can get a 13-gallon trashcan full about every two days, if we’re good about picking it up.  It seems that the other two composters are actually going a bit, the original black orb especially.  Also, extensive and energetic turning and removal of sticks and supposedly-compostable CDS cups has made the upright composter a lot happier.  We also pulled out all the egg cartons and tore them up– I’m hoping that more effective surface area will make them break down faster.

We should to get a few things done in the near term:

• Move some more squash plants into the main bean patch
• Plant daikon radishes in the now bean + squash patch
• Trellis the peas– the larger ones are already sending out tendrils
• Plant snow peas, arugula, and potatoes– and anything else we want for a winter crop

The MHF Fund has generously agreed to provide funding for us to purchase a drip irrigation system. Currently, the money was included in a grant to the Caltech Community Garden Project, and they’ll be placing the order for us directly. Stay posted for details.

Roper and I spent another $35 of the garden fund on seeds.  While this seems like a small amount, it’s not sustainable from year to year, and we’re all about sustainability.  So let’s save seeds from this stuff.

But yeah, we’ll shortly be receiving

• Arugula (Rocket)
• Amaranth
• Anise Hyssop (good for teas and attracting bees) 
• Pennyroyal
• Coriander 
• Green Honeydew Melon (resistant to powdery mildew!)
• “Beer Friend” variety Edamame  ;-)
• Daikon (Japanese radish)
• Kohlrabi

The herbs, amaranth, and edamame will have to wait until spring, but if we can find space, let’s put in some of the rest this weekend.

We also ordered some bacterial inoculants, to give our peas, beans, and edamame the symbiotic bacteria to fix nitrogen effectively.  The bacteria persist in the soil after being introduced, so we’ll only have to do this once.   

Now all we need is a trashcan and a machete.  Val’s on it.

(File it under “smarter composting.”)