A Victory Garden

Hooray rain! All the ponds are full to the brim and overflowing down through the rest of our yard. Now that gives me more motivation to finish the water system out the back, soon as I can kill off more poison ivy that is in the vicinity. 

The rain managed to sweep a baby gold fish from the top pond into the lower one and I caught him by hand. Cool stuff. I’ll be sure to take pictures this evening of our full ponds!

I don’t have time tonight and possibly won’t have time until Sunday to upload anything but I do have a photo tour that I’ll be posting soon. I’m also going to do a seed swap with a fellow permie on Tuesday! That’ll be fun. I love swapping seeds- ‘gotta have em all’. 

Need to get some seed balls out before wrapping up some final wedding things! Its really hot out this week (near record highs, of course, whats new, climate change? naw, months of record temps are just a liberal globalist conspiracy to take your job)… so I took this opportunity to stay safe from the UV rays.

Then I have to work, again, the next day. At least I’ll have quite a few days away from work for the upcoming wedding- then two days after I return to be in the garden.

I have a lot that needs to be done. More poison ivy has shown itself (good grief!) so thats #1. Then I need to begin to brew some compost tea, chop down some comfrey, plot out where the trees will be planted, transplant, and sow the tree seeds… maybe I’ll get it all done. I hope.

And I need to take more photographs. Nothing too exciting is happening since I haven’t had but a couple of hours here and there to actually spend outside. Clover/alfalfa doesn’t change much after its fully grown.

It got down to just around freezing last night. Very blustery today here in Winston-Salem. Very chilly after the warm weather we have had. This is, once again, why May is the last frost date- no matter how much April will fool you.

I almost feel bad for the people who bought watermelons, squash, and other hot weather crops from the store these past few weeks. I know some of them kept ‘em in containers and others have had to cover them up.

We have our few plants from seed outside in the garden. Haven’t checked yet to see if they made it or not- possible that they did. If not, whats 10 seeds? 

Anyway, tomorrow should be warmer than today and I have the day off. What to do, what to do…

I do need to go buy some more mulch from the city. Then I can plant out trees seeds!

Black locust, Korean pine nuts, and Eastern Red Cedar. So much to do, so little time….

I didn’t tell you how I prepped the new beds for the cover crop. 

Since the lime was already down, I decided to mix some organic potting soils we have (one of which is inoculated with micro organisms), maybe half a pound of organic 5-8-5 fertilizer (all natural based, no super phosphate thank heavens), and leaf compost together in the wheel barrow. I then broadcasted this mixture out between (and some into) the crimson clover underneath the plum. With the remainder of this one wheelbarrow of mix, I did the long square strip along the fence.

For the next few hours I brought over the mulch you saw in the picture I uploaded tonight and spread it over this mixture- very lightly. No sheet mulching this time. I figure if the crimson clover is doing so well competing with grass, then why couldn’t the others! No use wasting sheet mulch materials here.

Then this evening we made seed balls from pond clay, our fungal inoculants, diluted compost tea, as well as the organic potting soils. We are just making seed balls then planting them into the mulch. We’ll probably sow some lettuce and other crops in here as well, possibly even some melons. But first we want to see how these guys take off!

(Rain is in our forecast for Saturday and Sunday, we we didn’t water the entire beds- but that is part of our plan this weekend in case the rains are insufficient. It takes a lot of moisture to rehydrate this dehydrated mulch)