Forgot to mention, my third double lily finally showed up on Wednesday, so now I don't have to buy more next year. Booya! At least one thing went right in the garden this week.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Mulch, schmulch
According to the organic people, you can kill weeds by covering them with cardboard and mulch. Therefore, all the paths at the Community Gardens are covered with cardboard and mulch.
HA!
Let me tell you, that stuff does NOT work! I spent an hour weeding around my plot this morning. So long that my dog got bored with running around digging for varmints and started whining to go home. The weeds are EVERYWHERE and they don't give a fig about the cardboard or the mulch. The cardboard gets wet and decomposed and looks untidy, and the cedar mulch makes it that much harder to find the weeds, but weeds there are. That stuff is bosh.
So other than weeding, I raked up some of the mulch, to make it easier to see the weeds in future. Down with mulch!
You know what else?
How come I had to weed both sides of my plot, all the way to the neighbours'? Shouldn't half of the weeding on each side be done by said neighbours?
Bah.
HA!
Let me tell you, that stuff does NOT work! I spent an hour weeding around my plot this morning. So long that my dog got bored with running around digging for varmints and started whining to go home. The weeds are EVERYWHERE and they don't give a fig about the cardboard or the mulch. The cardboard gets wet and decomposed and looks untidy, and the cedar mulch makes it that much harder to find the weeds, but weeds there are. That stuff is bosh.
So other than weeding, I raked up some of the mulch, to make it easier to see the weeds in future. Down with mulch!
You know what else?
How come I had to weed both sides of my plot, all the way to the neighbours'? Shouldn't half of the weeding on each side be done by said neighbours?
Bah.
Baobab Sunday
Bah. I should have shot Zadok a few weeks ago at its peak, when there were lots more leaves and they were much greener. But then, I put both baobabs out on the balcony during the day so they'd get some sun, and with the dry winds and the hot temperatures the first week, I think they figured it's dry season, because they started shedding their leaves. Baobabs normally have no leaves for nine months a year, so I guess this isn't exactly abnormal, but it still looks depressingly ratty. And Ahimelek has no leaves left at all, besides being rather short and squat.
I haven't measured Ahimelek lately, because it hasn't been getting any taller, but Zadok is 10 inches tall. Strange, because I could have sworn I measured it at 11" a while back.
Oh well. They're alive, at least. That's progress over this time last year.
Vegetables, schmegetables
Well, I've learned an important lesson about vegetable gardening. Namely, it sucks.
The alternating cold and hot dry winds killed the pumpkins. I've pulled out almost all the ones I planted; this is the healthiest one that remains. I do have some better ones at home, because there was no room for them and they were the least healthy on the day I planted out. I left the trays in the car for a week with no water, because I figured I could let them die, then I brought them back inside and watered them thinking I might have to replace the ones in the garden, and now I have four pumpkins at home that after all that, are healthier than the ones in the garden. I guess I can put them outside with a cloche and see what happens. Or I could get more seeds, but this late in the season, it's rather pointless. There are 90 days left till first frost, so counting the time spent in the mail and the time from seed to five leafs, I need approximately a 50-day pumpkin. And the fastest pumpkins are 65 days, I think, plus they're carving pumpkins, not eating pumpkins. The fastest eating pumpkins at Stokes are Trickster, which is 75 days. Well, at least I'll know for next year: plant Trickster, not Baby Pam.
Something is eating the cabbages. And yes, my camera failed to focus on the right thing yet again. Actually, I used macro in my garden and missed almost all the shots, then I used regular shooting in the other plot I'm looking after and all the shots were in focus. Darn you, Canon. Darn you to heck. Anyway, something is eating the cabbages, that is, the Brussels sprouts and cauliflowers. One of my clients at work, who is 84 years old and has spent most of her life in agricultural pursuits (besides attending the founding convention of the NDP - she's THAT cool), suspects it might be cabbage moths, although, she said, it's a bit early for them. But then, it's been a really warm spring, so they could well be early. And, she adds, "it's new ground, so there could be anything in it."
Zut alors. I really wanted to eat the Brussels sprouts myself. Still, I have some seedlings left at home, and some of the ones in the garden have put out true leaves despite the wind, the drought, the lack of sun, and the cabbage moths. Everybody else seeded their cabbages straight to the garden at the beginning of June and they have long, densely packed rows of huge baby leaves, but they'll have to thin them anyway, and mine are ahead of theirs developmentally. Neener neener.
And I'm pretty sure this is a weed. I haven't pulled out every last weed, because some of them could be zombies from whatever was growing there last year, but I'm pretty sure this is a weed.
Well, at least the peas are healthy. So far.
Also, there are some seeds on the shelf in the shed, which we're encouraged to apply to our gardens, though of course most of us have way too much stuff as it is. So I found some turnip seeds in there and sowed them, but as they're very small and the same colour as the dirt, I have no idea where they are now. Also there were some very pretty beans, so I made a row of those this morning.
Another problem with this vegetable-gardening schtick is, the soil is not good. There are big clumps of clay here and there, but mostly, it seems to be just black dust. It was bone-dry as far as my hands could reach when I weeded, and despite frequent watering, I don't find it much improved. It hasn't rained any significant amount in two months, the wind is dry, and on top of all that, it's been mostly cloudy for a week, which means the solar-powered water pump hasn't worked very much. I managed to get out there in moments of sun the last two days and water with the hose, but the rest of the time I've been using watering cans, which naturally dampens my ambition. But even when the pump is working, I water, and I think I've given it a good soaking, and then for all that it's still barely wet. I suppose I could just leave the hose lying there for an hour, but the other gardeners might object.
Sigh.
Vegetable gardening sucks.
The alternating cold and hot dry winds killed the pumpkins. I've pulled out almost all the ones I planted; this is the healthiest one that remains. I do have some better ones at home, because there was no room for them and they were the least healthy on the day I planted out. I left the trays in the car for a week with no water, because I figured I could let them die, then I brought them back inside and watered them thinking I might have to replace the ones in the garden, and now I have four pumpkins at home that after all that, are healthier than the ones in the garden. I guess I can put them outside with a cloche and see what happens. Or I could get more seeds, but this late in the season, it's rather pointless. There are 90 days left till first frost, so counting the time spent in the mail and the time from seed to five leafs, I need approximately a 50-day pumpkin. And the fastest pumpkins are 65 days, I think, plus they're carving pumpkins, not eating pumpkins. The fastest eating pumpkins at Stokes are Trickster, which is 75 days. Well, at least I'll know for next year: plant Trickster, not Baby Pam.
Something is eating the cabbages. And yes, my camera failed to focus on the right thing yet again. Actually, I used macro in my garden and missed almost all the shots, then I used regular shooting in the other plot I'm looking after and all the shots were in focus. Darn you, Canon. Darn you to heck. Anyway, something is eating the cabbages, that is, the Brussels sprouts and cauliflowers. One of my clients at work, who is 84 years old and has spent most of her life in agricultural pursuits (besides attending the founding convention of the NDP - she's THAT cool), suspects it might be cabbage moths, although, she said, it's a bit early for them. But then, it's been a really warm spring, so they could well be early. And, she adds, "it's new ground, so there could be anything in it."
Zut alors. I really wanted to eat the Brussels sprouts myself. Still, I have some seedlings left at home, and some of the ones in the garden have put out true leaves despite the wind, the drought, the lack of sun, and the cabbage moths. Everybody else seeded their cabbages straight to the garden at the beginning of June and they have long, densely packed rows of huge baby leaves, but they'll have to thin them anyway, and mine are ahead of theirs developmentally. Neener neener.
And I'm pretty sure this is a weed. I haven't pulled out every last weed, because some of them could be zombies from whatever was growing there last year, but I'm pretty sure this is a weed.
Well, at least the peas are healthy. So far.
Also, there are some seeds on the shelf in the shed, which we're encouraged to apply to our gardens, though of course most of us have way too much stuff as it is. So I found some turnip seeds in there and sowed them, but as they're very small and the same colour as the dirt, I have no idea where they are now. Also there were some very pretty beans, so I made a row of those this morning.
Another problem with this vegetable-gardening schtick is, the soil is not good. There are big clumps of clay here and there, but mostly, it seems to be just black dust. It was bone-dry as far as my hands could reach when I weeded, and despite frequent watering, I don't find it much improved. It hasn't rained any significant amount in two months, the wind is dry, and on top of all that, it's been mostly cloudy for a week, which means the solar-powered water pump hasn't worked very much. I managed to get out there in moments of sun the last two days and water with the hose, but the rest of the time I've been using watering cans, which naturally dampens my ambition. But even when the pump is working, I water, and I think I've given it a good soaking, and then for all that it's still barely wet. I suppose I could just leave the hose lying there for an hour, but the other gardeners might object.
Sigh.
Vegetable gardening sucks.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Perennials, schmerennials
My perennial garden, a month after planting. Now that I can compare my perennials to everyone else's, it's becoming really evident how much sunlight my plants are missing out on. Some people's gardens are getting more than 20 hours of sunlight right now; mine gets barely eight in the sunniest spot, which is where I put my J.P. Connell. Of course the fact that all these perennials were just planted this spring also slows them down compared to established plants, but I blame mostly the sunlight.
More specifically, here is how everyone is doing.
- J.P. Connell is putting out tons of leaves. Not a lot of height being gained, but certainly the leaves are doing great.
- None of the tulips came up. That's too bad, but then again, it would be foolish to underestimate a plant. Maybe they're biding their time.
- Only two of the three double oriental lilies came up, and I can't remember where the third one is, otherwise I'd dig and see what's happening. Now the thing is, there are three of them because they came as a set: Soft Music, which I really liked, Lodewijk, which I really really really really liked, and Magic Star, which I bought because it was included with the other two. So if the missing one is Soft Music or Magic Star, well, that's one thing. But if it's Lodewijk, I'll be very sad. On the other hand, now that my garden is essentially complete, I can afford to buy a few more Lodewijks next spring if I have to.
- The Celebrity peony (the $40 one) is putting out canes. Not nearly as fast as everyone else's peonies that get three times as much sun, but it's alive and well. You can't be in a rush with peonies anyway, they live 20 years and don't like having their roots disturbed, so it's pretty fair that the first summer is a bit slow.
- The Shirley Temple peony (the $12 one) has live roots, but so far no canes. I wonder if I should have buried the entire thing like I did with Celebrity. But, again, if it fails, there is a lot more room in the garden budget for next year, so I can replace it. In fact, I can replace it with something much fancier, from a peony specialist.
- The Asiatic lilies are... still alive, I guess. They got horribly burned and beaten by the cold north wind since they've been out there, but the roots are alive. The orange one that wasn't what I ordered is even looking like there is new growth on it.
- The Stargazer lily is out there somewhere... maybe. It hasn't come up. But since I paid $6 for it and it gave me some lovely flowers last year, maybe I've got my money's worth out of it.
- The dicentra stopped blooming, but the leaves look very happy.
- The toad lilies are all alive, though not growing quickly.
- The anemones are growing. In fact, they may be the fastest-growing bulb I have.
- The ranunculi which I bought from my work's fundraiser haven't come up, but it was more for a good cause than because I wanted ranunculi anyway.
- Someone donated a foot-tall lilac. They grow everywhere in her yard because there used to be a big one that the landlord cut down. Anyway, it's wide awake. I put it in the shade, since they seem to be highly shade tolerant.
- The flax finally seems to be prospering, though there isn't nearly as much as I should have got out of four packets of seeds. Hopefully this time it will establish itself and I won't have to do it again.
- The pansies are sprouting, but since the dog picked that spot for her bed at first, I suspect most of the seeds stuck to her fur and are gone.
- The hollyhocks are also sprouting.
- The California poppies are also sprouting.
- The pear trees are not moving much. They withstood the wind very well, but I suppose it must still be a drag.
- The two mayday trees haven't leafed out yet and have no new growth whatsoever, even though they're alive and they were growing inside the winter hut. I might have to get more seeds in the fall.
That's pretty much the things I know about. I know I seeded some other things, but I don't know what I put where or what they look like as sprouts. There are certainly many shapes of sprouts coming up. I suspect some of them are from the bird seed mix, but clearly some are weeds. Luckily, I now know a black mustard sprout when I see it, so I've been able to pull them when they're less than an inch tall and still harmless.
Perhaps the greatest sign of progress is that I have not dumped thousands of seeds indiscriminately because "nothing is coming up." So it looks a little sparse right now, but when everything gets moving in July, it's gonna look pretty good, if I do say so myself. On the other hand, it certainly doesn't make for a lot of blogging.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
We can't both be right
Today, June 2, was the first work bee of the season at the Community Garden. Where I have a plot, so that hopefully I'll have actual pumpkins this year.
Some people have been planting already on account of the bizarrely warm weather (Yellowknife was the hot spot for Canada earlier this week - WTF?), but I was either too busy, too something else, or too demotivated even to go check it out. Nonetheless, since everyone was encouraged to attend the work bee, I had marked it on my calendar a long time ago. And when something is written on my calendar, I do it. If I say I will, I'm probably just lying to make you go away. If I write it on my calendar, I have to do it. For some reason, I have great difficulty disobeying written instructions. Anyway.
The work bee was scheduled for 9 AM, so I was right on time, partly because I like to be on time, and partly because there was a specific job I wanted: painting numbers on the raised beds. Seemed relaxing. And sure enough, right at 9 o'clock, no one had volunteered for that yet. And no one had brought the right tools, either, so I had to go home and get mine, including the right shape of brush, a sanding block, and 60-grit paper. Because the beds are made of pretty well weathered wood, and you can't just paint over that.
All right then. I set to work. There are 38 beds, therefore I have to sit down on the ground and get up again 38 times. One woman commented that she was glad she didn't have that job, because if she had to sit on the ground she'd never get up again. Another one thought it must be terribly tiring because of the sanding, which of course, requires a certain amount of energy to be successful. So albeit I just sat in the dirt painting numbers, everyone seemed to think I had drawn the toughest job there, and so one person kindly pulled the dandelions from my plot, which given my enduring good fortune, was of course the one with the most weeds in the entire garden.
Meanwhile, everyone else was supposed to be doing... work-like things, particularly weeding the paths and adding cedar mulch. But then the Local Gardening Expert arrived. Now let me say that I have no knowledge whatever of her gardening achievements, and she may well be some kind of gardening guru. But the thing is, you can't have two people who know everything in the same talking space, therefore I don't spend time with her. Also, I already know 97% of everything, and the remaining 3% I can find out faster and more in-depth from Google than from listening to a Local Expert. So I kept on painting numbers, and one guy kept on weeding, and pretty much everyone else went to listen to the Local Gardening Expert. Then they gardened, and when she left, so did they.
Hey, what the? What about the weeding and the mulching and everything? Come back here, you slackers!
Dang it. They didn't even weed half the weeds. And they didn't even start on the cedar mulch. Some people...
Anyway. Once I got done painting all the numbers (and my name on my own bed, of course), I started preparing my plot.
Ok.
So.
First, weed. Because the woman did kindly pull the dandelions, but she left the other weeds because she can't bend down easily. So, weed. I was hoping to use one of those awesome stirrup-shaped root-cutting tools that was lying around; unfortunately, it had gone home when its owner did. Boohoohoo... I personally own no weeding tools, because I've never needed them. Yet.
Oh well then. I'll dig by hand, like my Neolithic ancestors. Or so I thought. But then I remembered that my Neolithic ancestors used antlers for digging, so I'm about 12,000 years behind times in my gardening technology. How sad.
The good thing though, is that after a massive amount of snow through the winter, we've had a horribly dry spring. Which isn't exactly "good" but has the very magical effect that everything is turning green without any rain at all, thanks to the moisture still held in the ground. But ground that has no plant cover, such as a raised vegetable bed, is pretty much just dust right now. And that was handy in that even some pretty fat taproots simply pulled right up, as long as you put your hand in the ground and pull the root, not the leaves. So, weeding went really quite well, if I may say so myself. Though I started to wonder why people had been telling each other to "just cut them with a knife." What? I'm pretty sure that if you cut weeds at the surface with a knife, they just come right back. And I do know 97% of everything. But oh well.
Two, cultivate. There were bags of manure donated by one of the hardware stores, which was very nice of them, except we were allowed one per bed, and mine could have used six or eight. But I didn't have that kind of money, and I'm supposed you don't look a gift horse in the... wait, let's not go there. But I pride myself on playing by the rules, so, one bag. I dumped my one bag of manure, and then turned the soil over with a big fork, until it was all, hopefully, well aerated. Given how dry it is, that wasn't too hard.
Three, water. Water is donated by the town and there is a very long hose and a pump, though I haven't determined how it gets its energy. And since so many people were there (not the ones from the work bee, who were mostly gone by then, but the ones who showed up fashionably after the bee), there was some waiting for the hose. And I didn't like how they were watering, because first they had one of those fancy nozzles that breaks up the water into various patterns like "shower", "jet", "mist" etc. Very cute, but it's a big waste of water. The more you break it up, the more surface area it has; the more surface area it has, the more it evaporates; the more it evaporates, the more you have to use. So just water straight from the hose. And second, they were barely using any water. Now granted, when 40 people have to share trucked water on a hot weekend, it makes sense to use it sparingly, but it's not much good putting a tiny bit of water on dust-dry dirt. And besides, if you're trying to save water, take that nozzle thing off and water straight from the hose.
But what do I know, right? I mean, other than 97% of everything. So when it was my turn with the hose, I took off the nozzle and watered as much as I dared. Somebody else was waiting, so I couldn't just leave the hose there for the afternoon, but I was hoping to get water at least as deep as I was going to plant. Which, as it turns out, I failed.
Four, mulch. Someone had brought in a big bag of grass clippings, which I had immediately claimed. There are some disadvantages to grass mulch, which the Local Gardening Expert explained and I didn't listen, but there are some advantages in that it contains lots of water, and in a drought, I think that will help me retain moisture. Unfortunately, it had been sitting for some time, and the grass was fermenting and quite smelly, not to mention really hot. But as I didn't have any other, I used it anyway. I covered my entire bed with grass mulch until none of the soil was showing. It's at least an inch thick, two in some places. And did I mention, none of the soil was showing? I thought that was the point of mulch. That way it keeps heat and moisture in the ground and, hopefully, weeds too. But meanwhile, most people used no mulch at all, and those who did used some very dry hay that was available at the site, and laid it on so thinly that you could see everything that was underneath. Um... What? How is that going to control heat, moisture and weeds?
I was getting aggravated. All these people listened to the Local Gardening Expert and then cut their weeds at the surface, used hardly any water, and threw on a very thin sprinkling of hay. I, who know 97% of everything, cut my weeds way down the roots, watered heavily, and mulched heavily with fresh grass clippings. And we can't both be right. But if I'm wrong, then why does my flower garden look so good?
It's bugging me.
Anyway, once my plot was weeded, fertilised, cultivated, watered and mulched, I had to plant it. So I went home to fetch my seedlings, only to discover that the landlord had broken the second elevator. Whenever the landlord is in town, he breaks at least one elevator. This time, the first one had crapped out early in the week, if not last weekend. The second one had broken down once on Thursday, but been reset by the Fire Department. The landlord got in on Thursday or Friday, did nothing about the elevator, and got his army of badly paid, under-the-table, no insurance, no training, casual-labour goons running all over the building, as usual, and sure enough, today he broke the one remaining elevator. So now we have no elevators at all, and it's an emergency call-out for Blair the Elevator Mechanic, who has to come from Yellowknife. So he'll be here tomorrow at a considerably higher cost than had we scheduled him to come in on Friday, or better yet, not broken the elevators in the first place. And what's more annoying is, this isn't the first time. One time there was one elevator down for nearly three weeks, and the other one acted up for a week before it quit, and yet nothing was done until we were without elevators for the weekend and Blair the Elevator Mechanic had to come on an emergency call-out. And now the Fire Department is very unhappy because if they get a call while we have no elevators, they'll have to walk up and somehow try to get hypothetical victims down the stairs (where some of the lights are burnt out, I might add). And of course the RCMP aren't gonna be running up and down the building babysitting rowdies if they have to use the stairs. Though as to that, it's very quiet in here tonight, so maybe the rowdies decided to go party somewhere they don't have to walk up. But I digress.
My seedlings included pumpkins (Baby Pam - I slew the Atlantic Giant because it was taking up too much space), onions (Red Zeppelin - I had to buy them because of the name), cauliflower (Orbit, because it's too cool not to) and Brussels sprouts (Jade Cross). I hauled them back to the garden and dug holes through the mulch to plant them, and then firmed the ground and closed up the mulch around the plants again. They looked happy enough, though indeed the water didn't go more than four inches down in the best places, which is sad. Also, there wasn't room for all my seedlings. I planted almost all the pumpkins and all the Brussels sprouts, half of the onions, and less than half of the cauliflower, of which there weren't many to begin with. I hope I get one head of cauliflower, because I really want to taste this variety. If it's good, maybe I'll get two plots next year and grow more crazy cauliflowers.
Also, I had peas, but I hadn't started them because they're fast-growing. I just poked holes in the ground with a dowel, hopefully to a more or less suitable depth, dropped one or two peas in each, and closed them over. Now of course the mulch might prevent the peas from coming up, since it's supposed to prevent things emerging from the ground. That's among the 3% of things I don't know yet. Time will tell.
After that, I watered again, more than the first time. Because you always water in when you transplant, obviously, and because I hadn't watered enough the first time, also obviously. Also because there was hardly anyone left by then and the water tank looked about half full still, and because I wanted to cool and saturate my mulch. I'll go back tomorrow and give it another soaking.
Now my plot looks totally unlike anyone else's. In fact, it looks terribly messy, because it's covered in grass clippings. So I better be getting a kick-ass crop of everything, otherwise I'll look like I should have listened to the Local Gardening Expert, which is the last thing I want to do.
Still, it's hideously dry out, and it's also June 2, that is, 22 days before the average date of last frost. So anything that can keep my plot warm and wet has got to be a good thing. If we get a frost, with how dry and bare those other plots are, I think their plants are gonna be really sorry they're not mulched.
Inshallah, right?
Some people have been planting already on account of the bizarrely warm weather (Yellowknife was the hot spot for Canada earlier this week - WTF?), but I was either too busy, too something else, or too demotivated even to go check it out. Nonetheless, since everyone was encouraged to attend the work bee, I had marked it on my calendar a long time ago. And when something is written on my calendar, I do it. If I say I will, I'm probably just lying to make you go away. If I write it on my calendar, I have to do it. For some reason, I have great difficulty disobeying written instructions. Anyway.
The work bee was scheduled for 9 AM, so I was right on time, partly because I like to be on time, and partly because there was a specific job I wanted: painting numbers on the raised beds. Seemed relaxing. And sure enough, right at 9 o'clock, no one had volunteered for that yet. And no one had brought the right tools, either, so I had to go home and get mine, including the right shape of brush, a sanding block, and 60-grit paper. Because the beds are made of pretty well weathered wood, and you can't just paint over that.
All right then. I set to work. There are 38 beds, therefore I have to sit down on the ground and get up again 38 times. One woman commented that she was glad she didn't have that job, because if she had to sit on the ground she'd never get up again. Another one thought it must be terribly tiring because of the sanding, which of course, requires a certain amount of energy to be successful. So albeit I just sat in the dirt painting numbers, everyone seemed to think I had drawn the toughest job there, and so one person kindly pulled the dandelions from my plot, which given my enduring good fortune, was of course the one with the most weeds in the entire garden.
Meanwhile, everyone else was supposed to be doing... work-like things, particularly weeding the paths and adding cedar mulch. But then the Local Gardening Expert arrived. Now let me say that I have no knowledge whatever of her gardening achievements, and she may well be some kind of gardening guru. But the thing is, you can't have two people who know everything in the same talking space, therefore I don't spend time with her. Also, I already know 97% of everything, and the remaining 3% I can find out faster and more in-depth from Google than from listening to a Local Expert. So I kept on painting numbers, and one guy kept on weeding, and pretty much everyone else went to listen to the Local Gardening Expert. Then they gardened, and when she left, so did they.
Hey, what the? What about the weeding and the mulching and everything? Come back here, you slackers!
Dang it. They didn't even weed half the weeds. And they didn't even start on the cedar mulch. Some people...
Anyway. Once I got done painting all the numbers (and my name on my own bed, of course), I started preparing my plot.
Ok.
So.
First, weed. Because the woman did kindly pull the dandelions, but she left the other weeds because she can't bend down easily. So, weed. I was hoping to use one of those awesome stirrup-shaped root-cutting tools that was lying around; unfortunately, it had gone home when its owner did. Boohoohoo... I personally own no weeding tools, because I've never needed them. Yet.
Oh well then. I'll dig by hand, like my Neolithic ancestors. Or so I thought. But then I remembered that my Neolithic ancestors used antlers for digging, so I'm about 12,000 years behind times in my gardening technology. How sad.
The good thing though, is that after a massive amount of snow through the winter, we've had a horribly dry spring. Which isn't exactly "good" but has the very magical effect that everything is turning green without any rain at all, thanks to the moisture still held in the ground. But ground that has no plant cover, such as a raised vegetable bed, is pretty much just dust right now. And that was handy in that even some pretty fat taproots simply pulled right up, as long as you put your hand in the ground and pull the root, not the leaves. So, weeding went really quite well, if I may say so myself. Though I started to wonder why people had been telling each other to "just cut them with a knife." What? I'm pretty sure that if you cut weeds at the surface with a knife, they just come right back. And I do know 97% of everything. But oh well.
Two, cultivate. There were bags of manure donated by one of the hardware stores, which was very nice of them, except we were allowed one per bed, and mine could have used six or eight. But I didn't have that kind of money, and I'm supposed you don't look a gift horse in the... wait, let's not go there. But I pride myself on playing by the rules, so, one bag. I dumped my one bag of manure, and then turned the soil over with a big fork, until it was all, hopefully, well aerated. Given how dry it is, that wasn't too hard.
Three, water. Water is donated by the town and there is a very long hose and a pump, though I haven't determined how it gets its energy. And since so many people were there (not the ones from the work bee, who were mostly gone by then, but the ones who showed up fashionably after the bee), there was some waiting for the hose. And I didn't like how they were watering, because first they had one of those fancy nozzles that breaks up the water into various patterns like "shower", "jet", "mist" etc. Very cute, but it's a big waste of water. The more you break it up, the more surface area it has; the more surface area it has, the more it evaporates; the more it evaporates, the more you have to use. So just water straight from the hose. And second, they were barely using any water. Now granted, when 40 people have to share trucked water on a hot weekend, it makes sense to use it sparingly, but it's not much good putting a tiny bit of water on dust-dry dirt. And besides, if you're trying to save water, take that nozzle thing off and water straight from the hose.
But what do I know, right? I mean, other than 97% of everything. So when it was my turn with the hose, I took off the nozzle and watered as much as I dared. Somebody else was waiting, so I couldn't just leave the hose there for the afternoon, but I was hoping to get water at least as deep as I was going to plant. Which, as it turns out, I failed.
Four, mulch. Someone had brought in a big bag of grass clippings, which I had immediately claimed. There are some disadvantages to grass mulch, which the Local Gardening Expert explained and I didn't listen, but there are some advantages in that it contains lots of water, and in a drought, I think that will help me retain moisture. Unfortunately, it had been sitting for some time, and the grass was fermenting and quite smelly, not to mention really hot. But as I didn't have any other, I used it anyway. I covered my entire bed with grass mulch until none of the soil was showing. It's at least an inch thick, two in some places. And did I mention, none of the soil was showing? I thought that was the point of mulch. That way it keeps heat and moisture in the ground and, hopefully, weeds too. But meanwhile, most people used no mulch at all, and those who did used some very dry hay that was available at the site, and laid it on so thinly that you could see everything that was underneath. Um... What? How is that going to control heat, moisture and weeds?
I was getting aggravated. All these people listened to the Local Gardening Expert and then cut their weeds at the surface, used hardly any water, and threw on a very thin sprinkling of hay. I, who know 97% of everything, cut my weeds way down the roots, watered heavily, and mulched heavily with fresh grass clippings. And we can't both be right. But if I'm wrong, then why does my flower garden look so good?
It's bugging me.
Anyway, once my plot was weeded, fertilised, cultivated, watered and mulched, I had to plant it. So I went home to fetch my seedlings, only to discover that the landlord had broken the second elevator. Whenever the landlord is in town, he breaks at least one elevator. This time, the first one had crapped out early in the week, if not last weekend. The second one had broken down once on Thursday, but been reset by the Fire Department. The landlord got in on Thursday or Friday, did nothing about the elevator, and got his army of badly paid, under-the-table, no insurance, no training, casual-labour goons running all over the building, as usual, and sure enough, today he broke the one remaining elevator. So now we have no elevators at all, and it's an emergency call-out for Blair the Elevator Mechanic, who has to come from Yellowknife. So he'll be here tomorrow at a considerably higher cost than had we scheduled him to come in on Friday, or better yet, not broken the elevators in the first place. And what's more annoying is, this isn't the first time. One time there was one elevator down for nearly three weeks, and the other one acted up for a week before it quit, and yet nothing was done until we were without elevators for the weekend and Blair the Elevator Mechanic had to come on an emergency call-out. And now the Fire Department is very unhappy because if they get a call while we have no elevators, they'll have to walk up and somehow try to get hypothetical victims down the stairs (where some of the lights are burnt out, I might add). And of course the RCMP aren't gonna be running up and down the building babysitting rowdies if they have to use the stairs. Though as to that, it's very quiet in here tonight, so maybe the rowdies decided to go party somewhere they don't have to walk up. But I digress.
My seedlings included pumpkins (Baby Pam - I slew the Atlantic Giant because it was taking up too much space), onions (Red Zeppelin - I had to buy them because of the name), cauliflower (Orbit, because it's too cool not to) and Brussels sprouts (Jade Cross). I hauled them back to the garden and dug holes through the mulch to plant them, and then firmed the ground and closed up the mulch around the plants again. They looked happy enough, though indeed the water didn't go more than four inches down in the best places, which is sad. Also, there wasn't room for all my seedlings. I planted almost all the pumpkins and all the Brussels sprouts, half of the onions, and less than half of the cauliflower, of which there weren't many to begin with. I hope I get one head of cauliflower, because I really want to taste this variety. If it's good, maybe I'll get two plots next year and grow more crazy cauliflowers.
Also, I had peas, but I hadn't started them because they're fast-growing. I just poked holes in the ground with a dowel, hopefully to a more or less suitable depth, dropped one or two peas in each, and closed them over. Now of course the mulch might prevent the peas from coming up, since it's supposed to prevent things emerging from the ground. That's among the 3% of things I don't know yet. Time will tell.
After that, I watered again, more than the first time. Because you always water in when you transplant, obviously, and because I hadn't watered enough the first time, also obviously. Also because there was hardly anyone left by then and the water tank looked about half full still, and because I wanted to cool and saturate my mulch. I'll go back tomorrow and give it another soaking.
Now my plot looks totally unlike anyone else's. In fact, it looks terribly messy, because it's covered in grass clippings. So I better be getting a kick-ass crop of everything, otherwise I'll look like I should have listened to the Local Gardening Expert, which is the last thing I want to do.
Still, it's hideously dry out, and it's also June 2, that is, 22 days before the average date of last frost. So anything that can keep my plot warm and wet has got to be a good thing. If we get a frost, with how dry and bare those other plots are, I think their plants are gonna be really sorry they're not mulched.
Inshallah, right?
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