Revamping the Spinach Bed

Since I harvested the last of the overwintered spinach on Thursday, I decided Friday was a good day to redo the bed before all the weeds and bolting spinach were pulled.

This bed is made from some bricks from a walk that was taken apart. They aren't laid down with any kind of foundation, but just put on the surface. Over time the soil from inside the bed sinks.

And the bricks start slowly falling into the bed which leaves gaps on the sides. So every couple of years I take them out and put rocks under them and put them back. It is a bit of a chore, but not all that hard. And I like the brick lined beds which are hot in the summer and grows my sweet potatoes and melons better than my wooden raised beds in the rest of the garden.

Plus I like the pretty circle pattern. Which I can't do in wood. As you can see I got rid of the bolting spinach and the weeds. I raked the soil smooth. Then I sifted enough compost to cover the bed. I like to add about an inch every year. Some years they only get a half of an inch which is what I consider the minimum to keep the beds healthy. Because I almost always have a real crop in the beds, I can't use things like cover crops. My garden isn't that big. So I make a lot of compost and leaf mold every year. Anything to get organic matter into the soil.

Compost

I have two small black bins. One for composting the kitchen scraps and one for holding finished compost. The later was almost empty. In addition I have four pallet bins. Two hold leaves that I collect in the fall and two are for my working compost. I don't keep any of these bins very active. Worms probably do as much of the breakdown as anything else. It is hard sifting compost with the number of worms that proliferate over the summer. Even now when things are cold there are a lot of worms working.

Most of the garden got compost last fall, all except the overwintered kale and spinach beds. I'll need that compost in June when I turn the spinach bed into melons. In addition the kitchen scrap bin gets pretty smelly as it melts out from the winter. Even though it is covered it gets very wet and goes a bit anaerobic. Which means as soon as possible after it thaws I need to turn it. When I turn it in the fall I tend to get nice compost out of the bottom, but things don't break down as much over the winter when it is frozen.

The third pallet bin (left to right) was empty. I started by turning over the second pallet bin into it. When I had a good foot at the bottom, I put a couple of buckets of the kitchen compost on it. Then more of the garden waste from bin two. I repeated that until the kitchen bin was done. I spread the chore over two days. Now it is finished.

Well almost finished. The kitchen bin is finished, but I had to quit turning bin two as I hit ice. The rest of that is frozen. Now that the covering insulation of all the compost is gone I'm sure it will thaw quickly. I'll do bits of it as it thaws out each day. At this point I'm sifting what is there for finished compost. I want to get any bits that are finished sorted out from the sticks and half decomposed material. And I was desperately trying not to kill any worms while I was doing it. I was shocked how many works resided just above the frozen block of compost.

Compost is not the only thing I've been working on in the garden. I've been busy planting a few things. Above is the marjoram. I also planted winter savory. Seeded radishes. And received and planted my Lee #8 saskatoon (also called a juneberry or serviceberry). This morning the only plants that I had outdoors were extras from other plantings.

Which is good since it was time to bring down another flat of plants. These are the last set of baby Asian greens, the Brussels sprouts, and the zinnias. I covered them because it is getting warm enough that the root maggot fly might be out and about. The basil was in that flat too, but I took those plants out and left them upstairs with the six lettuce plants. There are just twelve plants left upstairs. It almost seems like it isn't worth keeping the lights on. I will though until it warms up enough to put the plants outdoors. I don't have any south facing windows. Just southeast and southwest. The lights will be better for them.

Compost

I've had a bunch of small little things to say over the last week, but I haven't been writing anything. Just because we still have feet of snow on the ground doesn't mean things aren't happening on the garden front. I may or may not catch up with all my little things, but I'll start with the above photo. We have had so much snow I've been dreaming of it at night. Well dreaming of it melting. In my dream the snow melted in a very strange way and left little bits of pretty icy structure everywhere but all conforming to the rectangular beds underneath the snow. It was gorgeous. I even dreamed of taking a photo and showing you all how beautiful it was. Snow doesn't melt like that in real life. Only in dreams. Then then next morning I saw this outside the back door to the garden. It isn't nearly as elaborate as the images in my dream, but still it had some of the idea of it.

But back in real life, yesterday was our town's ecofest. My husband and I have gone over the years. They always have a table to talk about composting and they have a truck out back where you can pick up a bit of compost to bring home. Joel and I walk to this, so we can't pick up a lot. But at least this time I brought a backpack to pick up some. I'm going to use some of it to grow greens before all the snow melts out. Usually I do most of the garden lugging, but Joel said I could fill it way up and he would carry it home. Whoot!

Also at ecofest there is a talk every year. One year was about a guy who farms in peoples' back yards. He gives them some of the produce as rent for the land and he sells the rest. Last year was a talk from the town historian who renovated an old stick style house and how he made it more energy efficient. This year had a talk by the town manager. He talked about what had been done in the town over the last 5 years. We made our goal of reducing our energy use by 20% in five years. We are one of seven Massachusetts towns to succeed in this challenge. Go Arlington!

Double Digging

The soil in my beds is pretty good and according to the extension service a little gravely. When we put in the yard we dug down 12" (30cm) and put in good soil (I say "we" but the yard people did it not me). Though the soil is really good, to keep it aerated I fork it over before putting in a new crop. And every year I try to double dig one of the big beds. That way they will all be dug up once every 8 years and they won't get too compacted over time.

In the summer and fall I put on my clogs, but for this I put on sturdy shoes since I'll be digging a lot. I wouldn't want to bruise the bottom of my feet. As I look at my clogs now I think it might be time to replace them with boots. It is getting really cold out there. I'd like to stay warm when I have to make those dreaded cold trips to the compost pile. Anyway, back to my garden soil.

Double digging is a lot of work. It involves digging one spades depth and width into the soil and putting it in a wheelbarrow. Then in the hole you dug, you fork up the bottom, so in effect you are aerating a double depth of soil. You aren't turning the soil over. On the contrary, you are trying to keep the soil profile the same.

You don't want to dig up sub soil and put it on the top of your bed or anything. For my soil it doesn't matter all that much as it was all put in as the same soil. The top few inches tend to be better in my beds because I add compost to the top every year, but that is about the only difference between top and bottom. But for most beds you want to keep the different soils all at their original level. So once you have the bottom forked over. You take the next row of soil over and carefully move it to the spot where you took the first row of soil out, trying not to turn it over, but put it back in the exact same spot. It never works like that as the soil slips from the spade often enough. But that is the theory.

The side on the left was finished. The one on the right hadn't been dug yet. You can see the difference it makes to double dig. The soil is about 3" taller after digging it. That is a lot of air that has been added. Though it will settle over time. And hopefully by next year it will not be over the rim of the bed.

After I did the beds, I added a layer of compost on the top. Now all the beds except the three that have growing things in them (spinach, kale, and bok choy) are covered in compost for the winter.

I had some compost left over. And put it in my storage bin. This is an old plastic bin whose top has a broken latch. So it won't keep out the animals anymore, but no animal really wants the finished compost anyway. I have enough for 2 1/2 more beds. I have three beds to cover. Hopefully there will be a bit more to sift out come spring. I hope so.

The last thing I did to finish up for the winter was to open the garden gates. Usually they are left shut during the growing season to keep the animals out. But for the winter we leave them propped open. So when it snows you can still get into the garden and more importantly, the compost pile.

Bag Lady

Once a year I go through my neighbors' trash looking for gold. That gold would be the lovely leaves from the trees that have been falling. I'll turn them into compost next year. Luckily for decades the towns I've been in or close to have required leaves be left in paper bags because they compost them. This makes it really easy to collect them.

Not all bags on the curb are gold though. Some are sticks or weeds going to seed. I can often tell what is in the bag from the top and by how heavy it is, but some cruft gets through. That all gets sorted out and put back on the curb for the town to take.

As I empty a bag I water the leaves so they start to break down. I get out any trash. I always find some. Last year I swear someone ate a bag of Halloween candy and left all the wrappers in the leaves. I got as much out as I could find, but when I was sifting compost this fall, I found more. This year there wasn't a lot of trash which made me very happy. But it was enough to half fill up that yellow bag at my feet.

I always fill up two bins with leaves and put a handful of extra leaf bags by the compost where we put our kitchen scraps. We always cover our kitchen scraps with some nice brown leaves. I always put a few of the bags still intact on the top of the bins. This keeps the leaves from blowing away. I wouldn't want to lose any of those precious leaves once I get them.

I usually don't ask my husband to help me with the gardening chores as he doesn't like doing them and I do, but he helps with this one and makes it go much faster. This year was quite pleasant too. It hadn't rained for a while, so all the leaves were dry and light. We had a warm sunny afternoon. Even the neighbors were chatty as they wanted to know what I was going to do with all those leaves. I wish every leaf collection day I had would be as nice.

Getting There

I had a long list of things to do. It isn't complete yet, but it is getting there. I finished sifting all the leaf mold. Yesterday I cleaned out three of the beds and put on compost. Today I did the last two that needed to be cleaned up for now and covered them up too - with compost and bird netting to keep the cats away. Half the beds are totally cleaned up now and a couple are half done, but still have some small harvests left.

In addition I got all the chard frozen. I left them in as they might still produce. Doubtful, but you never know what the weather will bring. Sometimes we are frozen or snowy by mid November, but not always. I've completed half the kale, but the other half is still to go. Kale is a slow process. I've got aphids in there. Not a ton, but enough. They tend to be in clumps, but I have to go through them and clean them really well.

I still have things on the list. I need to get out and pick most of the parsley and cilantro and freeze them. I need to clean up the front zinnias that are dead (the ones in the garden are still going strong). Sunday I need to collect leaves for next year's compost. At least nothing is horribly urgent anymore.

And I thought I was forgetting something in my last blog post. I was. I had to plant the garlic. I always do it in the last week of October. So today I finally got out and got those in.

I picked all the biggest cloves from the biggest bulbs to plant. I plant on a six inch offset grid. Though I haven't made up next year's garden plan yet, but did check my records and alliums have never been in this bed before and the bed had corn and squash previously. So it seemed a good bed to use. Hopefully everything else will fit together with a good rotation.

I'm So Behind

Why is it when you go on vacation and come back life is so hectic? It erases all that nice relaxation. Yesterday I had time to read two blog posts. I know I'll catch up, but it will take a while. Those really aren't my priority. Yesterday it was food shopping and cleaning up. I did go out to pick some vegetables for lunch at 12:15. I finally got to eat at 1:45. I should never go out to the garden for the first time right before lunch.

I noticed the broccoli had been knocked over by some storm while I was gone. I propped them all back up, but one head is really leaning sideways at this point. Then I noticed the chard had leaf miners in it. I had to clean all the eggs off the backs and pick off the bad spots. Then the cabbage was all bolting (in October?) so I picked what I could and cleaned that up. Sadly not much. I finally got to picking some carrots and green onions. I was pretty hungry by the time I fed myself.

I was noticing the date on the calendar. Usually the first weekend in November is the best time to pick up leaves to store for the next year. But I didn't have even one empty slot in my compost bins, much less the two that I need. So I finished sifting the compost out. One bin done. Today I've been working on the last leaf bin. There is a lot of good leaf mold in that bin, but it is mixed in with undecomposed leaves that need sifting out. It is a long slow process. I decided as I sifted I would put it on the finished beds. We are getting a freeze or frost on Sunday night so all the tender plants will die. So any tender plants could be removed.

I picked all the butternuts left in the bed. These set in September and might not really be good. I won't add them to the tally unless I can actually eat them. But for now I'll let them cure. They are such tiny little things.

Then I picked all the mustard seed off the plants. It is supposed to rain tonight and they don't need to get wet. They need to dry.

I have three large bags drying and one that I picked earlier in the year. So hopefully I'll have lots of mustard seed once they are all winnowed.

Then I brought a wheelbarrow filled with compost and leaf mold over to cover the bed.

So far I have three beds done with compost on them. Once they are covered with compost, I cover them with bird netting cut to size. This keeps the cats out. I just have five beds to finish and lots of leaf mold to sift through. I need to have it done by Sunday and I ought to be if I do three more tomorrow and two more on Friday.

And not to be forgotten I picked some seed from the zinnia. I like the yellow and red the best from these, so I chose seed from them. I couldn't find a lot of yellow as the plant had fewer flowers. I suppose I shouldn't choose fewer flowers for my seed, but the red one was the most abundant of all the plants, so maybe they will balance out in the end. I can always hope.

Things to get done this week in the garden: clean up five more beds, finish sifting leaf mold, pick all the chard and freeze, pick at least half of the kale and freeze, pick most of the parsley and freeze in cubes, pick and freeze any cilantro that is bolting, take down zinnias by the driveway as they are mostly dead, and collect leaves to fill two bins. Hopefully I won't find anything else that needs doing as that is enough. Oh yeah, and write my Garden Collective end of the month post.

Compost Time

I finally got my butt in gear yesterday and started to turn the compost pile. Well it isn't just one compost pile. First I had to play musical chairs with the other bins and sift out the finished compost along the way. Typically bin 1 (pallet bins numbered from the left to the right) has the most recent garden waste in it. Bin 2 has older garden waste that was turned over from bin 2. Bins 3 and 4 are leaf holding bins. Some Years I can wait until I need compost to turn over the piles but bin 1 was bursting at the seams and needed to be turned.

Since Bin 3 still had some leaves in it I moved them to bin 4 sifting out any finished leaf mold as I went. Since Bin 2 was a mix of finished compost and things that hadn't decomposed, I sifted through it. All finished compost went into Bin 3. All decomposed items went into the overflowing bin 1. I did part of that yesterday and part today. But finally bin 2 was empty.

Once it was empty I noticed that a lot of compost had fallen in back of the bin over the years. I have my cedar fence back there and I don't want that to decompose on me, so I took out the pallet and scooped up all the excess. I'll do that with the other bins when I get them empty next time. Though the fence looked fine as it wasn't really buried, the bottom board of the pallet had decomposed. I flipped the pallet over and around so the undecomposing boards will be in toward the compost. These have been here for about 3 1/2 years. And considering they are cheap wood, they have held up pretty well. If I can get seven years out of the pallets I'll be really happy. I can get free pallet easily enough just by asking around, but dragging them back and taking apart the piles to replace them is a PITA. I'd rather they last a long long time.

Once bin 2 was empty I started turning bin 1 over into bin 2. The top part is all new additions that are getting turned. As I turn them I'm adding a bit of eggshell that I've collected from the kitchen (the bag on top of the compost). And that is where I left it. I'll have to finish turning. And once I get down far enough I'm sure I'll find more compost to sift through. Hopefully it will be done before the weekend.

In totally non-compost non-garden related news, the Macintosh apples were in at the farmers market. I picked up a few to make my husband some applesauce. I'm going to be canning every week I can get my hands on more apples. He doesn't eat a lot of fruit and applesauce is one that he loves. I make it very healthy when I make it for him. No sugar and I use a stick blender to blend the peel into the sauce. I think if I make 75 jars he might be happy for the year. I'm not sure I'll have time for that many, but I'll try. I would also love some applebutter for me.

Applesauce and Cleaning Up

Seven pints canned plus two quarts in the fridge

I know this is a weird time to be making applesauce. I usually make applesauce in the fall. And I did last year. I think I made 29 pints of sauce last year. That ought to be more than enough in a usual year for us. But not this year. My vegetable and fruit hating husband actually likes applesauce and he is trying to put more fruit into his diet. So many nights after dinner he has a cup of applesauce. Well once he started to do this it used up my stores very quickly. I even made a couple of quarts about a month ago. Luckily I could still get bags of IPM Macintosh apples. To me applesauce just isn't applesauce without at least half of them being Macs. I like to mix apples though as it makes for a tastier sauce. Since the other kind they had that was IPM was Empire apples. I got those too. Last time I could find some Cameos which makes a great combo as it is a sweeter apple.

After lunch it was clean up time. I had two beds I wanted to clean up so the soil could warm up better before planting. The first was the old broccoli and chard bed. It was the last bed that hadn't gotten any compost.

After pulling out all the old plants I dumped the two bags of compost on it and spread it out. It will get turned into the first few inches of soil when I fertilize and plant in a week. This bed will have corn and squash.

The other bed I wanted to clean out was the spinach. This bed will be my sweet potato bed so it needs to be very warm before planting. I usually plant on June 1st, but I always take a look at the long term forecast before doing so. If we are having a cold spell it is better to wait.

I also cleaned up my three thyme plants, my rosemary, and did some weeding. The above thyme was the worst off. You can see it just has a small part that had any growth. So I ripped the rest of the plant out and just left those branches. I layered the thymes that were a little better off to make more. If this doesn't live, that is fine, I'll just transplant more here.

Gratuitous Johnny-Jump-Up Flowers

I also layered my dianthus. I'm trying to get my perennial dianthus to cover the area around a little path in the garden. Last year I broke up my plant and put little plants all over. Some lived and some didn't. So this year I'm layering more of them to get the area covered. I think in a few years it will be very pretty.

Boston Area Gleaners and a Few Odds and Ends

Oh my aching back. My husband tells me I'm an unpaid migrant farm worker. But I know the truth. I only picked lettuce stooped over for three hours and not all day.

Today was the first day that the Boston Area Gleaners (BAG) harvested this year. It was at Waltham Fields Community Farm. Matt, the BAG coordinator, and three of us volunteers spent the morning in one of their greenhouses picking baby lettuce. We probably picked around 100lbs. Matt drops gleaned food off at a lot of places that need fresh produce, but this time it was given to Food For Free, which itself distributes the food to many different places that that help those in need. I started volunteering last year and it is fun as we get to visit a lot of different farms through the growing season. City Growers was by far the most interesting as they use vacant lots in Dorchester and Roxbury to grow food.

They are expanding to the North Shore this year. So if you are interested or know anyone that lives on the North Shore that would be interested let them know about it. They have a lot of farms that want to join in, but they need people in the area to pick the produce.

As to my own garden I went out and spent money yesterday. I got two bags of composted manure for the last bed that still needed compost. I almost made enough compost for the garden last year, but not quite. I also picked up some salt marsh hay for my strawberries. I like to keep them thickly mulched to keep the cats out. Sadly it encourages the slugs, cut you can't have everything. I also bought flowers. Yes I plant flowers too, but I don't talk about it as much. This time I got flowers for my front planter. Last year it was pinks. This year I went with salmon colors. Now if I can just keep it watered and alive all summer long. I do so much better with plants in the ground as I can't kill them as easily.

Onions and Compost

Yesterday morning I was off to plant my allium bed. The garlic as you can see was planted last year and is up and off to a good start. The onion section of the bed was side dressed and aerated for the onion transplants.

My onion transplants were very nice this year. Some years I find the side leaves dying. but this year they were very strong and healthy.

I wanted to plant all my onions but I could only do the Copras. The Ailsa Craig and Redwing will have to wait for a day or two while the back end of the bed thaws out. Sadly it is still frozen halfway down the bed. The temperature difference is remarkable even in the top few inches of soil.

Then it was on to one of my most reviled chores in the garden. Once things have melted out I have to turn over the compost from the winter. I say compost, but what I really mean is the thawed mass of winter scraps from the kitchen.

We do put leaves on top as we put the scraps in. Well at least if the leaves are unfrozen enough to do so. But the reality is that it isn't really a compost pile over the winter. It is just frozen scraps. And when it thaws in the spring it is smelly and gross. And typically it goes anaerobic from too much moisture. So turning it over is pretty disgusting.

Not only that but the cats had started sitting on top of it watching the ground underneath. And yesterday the dog was barking at it. That could mean only one thing. There was a mouse in the compost pile. Now I put hardware cloth underneath the pile and the holes are too small for most mice on the side. But the mice are pretty good at getting in. The side has long narrow holes along to let air in. Well they had chewed through the plastic between two of the holes and it made it big enough for the mice to easily get in and out. Now I know mice are impossible to really keep out of any compost system. But I try. And with my kitty early warning system, I can clean it out and disrupt them enough to keep the place fairly free of mice. The other piles aren't nearly as attractive to them, as we only put kitchen scraps into the protected black one. I've never had a cat stalking any of the other piles.

So I turned the pile over into my main garden compost. I put a little of the goo from the black composter and lots of nice dry garden refuse and leaves to separate them. That ought to fix my smell. But what an icky job.

At least the overly moist compost at the bottom of the composter was filled with worms. Well really the whole container was filled with worms. Personally I think the worms attract the mice more than the kitchen scraps. I'm happy for all those worms though. I get a lot of worm castings in my compost every year.

Leaves and Protecting the Figs

Today we had our first snow. It didn't last and it didn't stick, but it is getting colder. One weatherman is predicting very cold temperatures tonight and tomorrow night. I was slightly scared of the ground freezing before I had everything out of the garden and things put to bed. Preparations started over the weekend. I had my annual leaf gathering trip. I borrow a minivan from a friend and I go out to collect leaves from my neighbors with some help from my husband. In our state you have to put your yard waste into large paper bags so it can be composted. It makes it easy to find leaves. Though occasionally you find other things in the bottom of the bags like branches. I usually have to go through them to get out the unwanted additions.

I fill half of the bins in my pallet compost area. I use the leaves over the year to make my compost. Also any that I don't use turns into leaf mold, and while it isn't as good as compost, it is still good organic matter to add to the garden. This year the leaves were bone dry. They don't break down well when dry, so in the last bin I made sure they were well watered as I added them.

Another thing I do with the leaves is insulate the figs trees for the winter. Figs are not truly hardy here. They will always die back to the ground. But at least they are hardy enough not to die totally. However if I protect them well enough their branches will mostly live. To help my plight out you can see I've trellised the plants into a candelabra. That way the main trunk of the tree is low to the ground and easier to keep warm.

Sadly there were still a lot of figs on the trees. They didn't have time to ripen. The trees are still only three years old. I'm hoping next year the trees will be more vigorous and get their branches grown quickly. But for now I picked off all the figs and old leaves and put them in the compost.

Once I had them off, I cut off every other branch and trimmed that branch down a bit. Figs have their main crop on new wood every year. It is the best tasting of the crops, but also the latest. I'm hoping to have a breba crop, which is a crop on one year old wood. It is much earlier. I don't know if it is possible here or not. But it can't hurt to try. If it doesn't work in future years I can cut the branches down to stumps to grow new wood every year.

To insulate my tree I have some 3/4" insulation. I stake the bottom so it can't move out then I fill the middle with dry leaves. Then I tape up the top so water can't get in. To one I added another layer of a tarp and the leaves went higher. I'm still experimenting with what works. I have seen a couple of other fig trees out in the neighborhood, but they tend to just use plain clear plastic to wrap up their trees. I've found that not good enough to guarantee the trunk won't die so I'm being more aggressive than that. If the trunks live then the branches have a better chance of growing quickly and putting out fruit before the cold hits.

And it took a while for the horizontal trunks to reach the ends of their 8' long trellis. In fact the Paradisio hasn't quite gotten there yet on one side. The Brown Turkey seems more vigorous and got there by the middle of the summer. I got most of the ripe figs this year from that tree and only one from the Paradisio. If the Paradisio ends up not performing next year I'll probably replace it with some other fruit.