Garden Update - February 1, 2011

There's a lot of activity in our little garden these days. Gus has been working exceptionally hard on the construction of new garden areas. David is great at cleaning up our dirt (shoveling it through a screen to remove rocks) and filling buckets with dirt to carry to the garden. Rachel turns out to be a fine planter. I'm the one who plans, waters and harvests. Boo pitches in where needed, which is a great help to everyone.



This past week, Allen, Rachel and Gus built a small screened shelter for use in the garden. It won't help with crawling or burrowing pests, but we're having quite a time with grasshoppers eating the cabbage plants (though ignoring plants right next to the cabbages), and we're hopeful that the screened area will help with that problem.



Everyone pitched in to sort out the worms from the wonderfully composted dirt they created for us, in big plastic bins behind our kitchen. We collected several buckets of good, rich compost. This was added to certain sections of the garden, where we'll place plants which don't appreciate manure as an addition to the soil. The worms are definitely thriving, and it was a big job to collect the dirt without losing worms in the process. Turns out, however, that our worm population is so high that we won't be missing the few worms that ended up in the garden.



We've added radishes and corn to our list of plants we're growing. Tomatoes and green peppers will be planted once we get a free moment. Everything is still experimental, so I'm keeping records of when each item is planted, how they thrive (or fail), and when we can harvest food from them.

The weather has been good. We actually got some cloudy days and some rainy nights recently, which the plants appreciated. Even in January, with cooler air temperatures, the sun can be challengingly bright and hot for the plants.

If you click on the picture below, you can see the view I get to look at as I work in the garden. I really do appreciate the views we enjoy up here!