Thursday, October 3, 2024

I've been catching up on stuff the last few days and have sort of ignored updating this site. One interesting development was finding our main raised garden bed filled with tiny weeds that germinated after a recent heavy rain. A few minutes work with our scuffle hoe cleaned up the weed problem.

As I hoed, I was careful not to harm our onions for overwintering and what kale had come up. I also found that a few carrot seeds planted on September 1 had finally germinated. The seed was pelletized, so I'm guessing that even with my frequent waterings, there wasn't enough moisture to melt the pellet covering.

I finally got around to mowing our lawn yesterday. I hadn't mowed through the drought and the mowing left a mess of grass clippings plus lots of spots that didn't mow well. I got the field next to us mowed this afternoon. While mowing, I thought, "What the heck. Let's try mowing down the spent sweet corn stalks." It ended up taking two or three passes over the rows, but chopped up the stalks pretty well. I was careful to keep the mower's wheels in the aisles between the corn rows. A corn stalk root can be sharp and give one a flat tire.

I still have peppers and tomatoes to pick and possibly a few potatoes to dig. Beyond that, my gardening efforts now mostly turn to getting our plots ready for next season. In our East Garden plot, there are zinnias to cut and compost. Once the tomato plants there are done, the cages need to come out and be stored before tilling the 80' x 80' plot and planting some really late hairy winter vetch.

The narrow raised bed where our early peas and cucumbers grew needs to be cleared and tilled, getting ready for a planting of garlic after our first frost.

And somewhat of a surprise, our small bunch of milkweed plants have seeds.

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Contact Steve Wood, the at Senior Gardening