Heirloom tomatoes from my garden

Monday, September 4, 2017

Labor Day Break...

Happy Labor Day!  I am writing this blog after a 4-year hiatus.  I really meant to keep blogging, but life happens.  After getting gainful employment again, things have been busy.  At the beginning of summer of 2014, my right foot/ankle started hurting and after putting up with the pain that seemed like it would not go away, I finally saw the doctor and was told I have torn both tendons on the outside of my right foot.  Not sure how that happened since the pain did not follow an immediate injury.  So, surgery it was (9/14/14) and I had to stay off that foot for at least 6 weeks.  My boss was great and I worked remotely from home.  Needless to say, the garden was left to nature.

However, when I was able to get up and get around, I made a trip out to the garden to look over the damage.  My husband had told me it was "completely dead," but upon inspection, I found some parsley, arugula and chives going strong.  However, I really couldn't work in the garden much.  So it wasn't until spring of 2015 that I really worked the garden much.  I tried to grow some melons but there were quite a few rodents that helped themselves to the melons and so I didn't get any that season.  Mother Nature must have taken pity on me because the following summer season (2016), I did not plant any melons but had the most wonderful watermelons grow atop the compost pile - not a scratch, nip or bite on them.   And, that fall, I had some volunteer cantaloupes in my hybrid hugelkultur bed as well as volunteer Armenian cucumbers.

This year my left knee started giving me fits and on June 14, 2017, I had an arthroscopy done.  They wanted me up and at 'em in PT - 18 sessions all told and I am still working remotely from home for half days.  My mornings are for excercising and working in the garden.  My compost pile has tripled in size as we are composting as much as possible and getting spent coffee grounds from a couple of places in town.  We also cleaned up the garden - there was plenty of biomass for the compost pile!  I was able to harvest 55 gallons so far of finished compost from the oldest part of the compost pile and will be harvesting more shortly.  The 3 ft by 25 ft bed had been infiltrated by Bermuda grass and I enlisted the help of my husband to assist with the cleanup.  Our 4 ft by 25 ft bed had mostly rye grass and some weeds with a little Bermuda but it was much easier to clean that one up!  Because the level of soil had dropped so much in this bed, we opted to buy so
me organic compost (Happy Gro) from Lowe's and I am in the process of screening it with my 1/4 inch screen and for every 2 cu ft bag, I'm harvesting 10 gallons of screened finished compost and 5 gallons of mulch.  I am using the mulch around the plants in the beds and mixing the compost with rehydrated coconut coir to add organic material to the soil and to fertilize the beds.  So, actually, I have 2 beds that have been fertilized with the homemade compost and this (largest) one with he store bought compost.  We shall see which.does better.

I have included some pictures from my grow room and the planted out areas.  Ok, so that's it for now.  Better get back to it so I can have some great veggies!

Later!


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