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

(File it under “smarter composting.”)

The volume of comments I have to sift through (don’t moderate all, some get flagged) was getting too much, so we added reCaptcha. It’s pretty easy to use and helps digitize old books! If you want to avoid having to use it, you can post signed in. If you want an account, you should email Alex.

The chief responsibility for day-to-day garden maintenance will be transferred from me back to Roper soon, as I leave on the 15th and he gets here on the 24th. With that in mind, a quick evaluation of the current state of things follows.

The north bed, along the wall of the House, is pretty much over for the summer. I harvested all the dry beans from it and put them in a pitcher, which is sitting on the bench to the west of this bed. One bean seems to have re-seeded itself and is sprawling on the ground because the mesh is no longer competent. There’s also some manky-looking remainders of the Russian kale, but I think someone’s been dumping cat litter on them again, so I wouldn’t eat them. Most of the rest of the bed is overrun with weeds.

The big bed is in several different stages at the moment. The east end is, as mentioned, overrun with grass. The onions and garlic are still growing there but may have some root rot, because the poor drainage has been keeping the area quite swampy; they still look healthy though. The Tuscan kale appears to be thriving. Tomatoes are looking a bit leggy and I didn’t see any flowers, although there were some green tomatoes. (The lack of ripe tomatoes can be put down to people eating them, which is OK.) The west end of that patch is planted out in Kentucky Wonder pole beans, of which some are thriving and some not. The ones that are doing well are already routed up poles and along strings, and look quite happy. I think the ones that aren’t are probably being overwatered, so I turned down the regulator. Also, I had to replace the cut hose, but the only thing available was the leaky green hose with the duct-tape patches so that’s what I used. I will expand the mulched area to cover the full garden bed this weekend if I have enough time and mulch.

Weird volunteer plants: At the west end of the big bed we have two squash plants with tiny leaves and powdery mildew, which are nonetheless producing flowers. We also have one big normal-looking squash. Don’t know what these are. In the east end there’s a strawberry plant growing under the garlics, and in the middle of the bed (just east of the ditch) are a couple of straggling eggplants and a nightshade that I don’t know what it was. The pictures of this have already been given to Roper; don’t know if he made anything of them, but he can attach them to this post if he likes.

The real potatoes are looking mostly dead, but the sweet potato is apparently thriving, since it’s flowering. I think this may be due to some failure of watering. However, the green leaky hose is routed through the potato heap to avoid water waste, which may revive the sad potatoes. For the record, there’s someone at the South Pas farmers market on Thursdays who sells some really excellent organic Yukon Golds at $1/pound — we could probably use some of these for seed potatoes next go-round if we felt like it, as it’s not terrifically expensive.

The compost ball needed nitrogen when we poked it yesterday, so we added coffee grounds and wet the whole thing down, which should get decomposition moving again. It doesn’t smell like it’s doing anything anaerobic, which is good. We’ll turn it again this weekend, water again if needed, and report again. We also salvaged 7 pallets from the synchrotron lot — thanks Mke Raven! — and stacked them behind the big Italian cypress at the northwest corner.

Things that need to be done in the short term (i.e. before I get back to California):

• Get a new extension hose to replace the green one.
• Ensure water supply to potatoes. Also start hilling again once it is clear which potato plants are dead and which aren’t.
• Save seeds from tomatoes. They appear to still be fruiting, so marking one or two of each variety as “do not eat this tomato” should be sufficient.
• Spray powdery mildew with milk or baking soda or something. It needs killing.

Longer-term stuff to do:

• Sickle out the tremendous overgrowth of grass in the north bed and in the east end of the big bed, and mulch after replanting with something useful.
• Redig the east end of the big bed, incorporating some sand or mulch for aeration. It’s grievously lacking drainage.
• New trellis along the north wall. We theoretically bought some robust nylon netting for this, which needs to be located and suspended.
• Construct potato enclosure.

Questions to discuss:

• Winter crops — I’ll put a new post up regarding this once I’ve discussed it with Roper, possibly on the garden wiki.
• What kind of cultura promiscua partnerships would help us maintain the beds against future grass invasions?
• Where will we source hay for next year’s potato patch?
• Do we want to try growing amaranth, and if so, where? It’s got a tendency to take over.

So I get this email this morning:

Turns out they were wrong — it was 25 packages But yeah - we have our 20 Tomato Towers (boxes in a pile near the garden), 10 compost buckets (will probably distribute tomorrow), and 3 Bio-Orbs.  The orbs are pretty awesome - they apparently want to be kept in a warm, sunny place for 24-48 hours before assembly to recover their roundness from shipping, so they’re sitting happily on the north side of Dabney courtyard.

8x wheelbarrowfuls.

Also, I think it’s safe to nudge up the estimate of woody things we can get per week; they had half a truckful for us from this -morning-, so it appears we’re covered, even should we need an order of magnitude more than we’re getting now.