Long day

I spent all day prepping three beds for transplanting. This involved hoeing the beds, weeding, weeding some more, tilling (by hand), shaping the beds, weeding again, spreading compost, laying drip irrigation, spreading leaves, and finally planting into a lasagna of organic material. Thank you to Jane's two boys, Sasha and Dimitri (and friends) who helped out for about an hour hucking material around the garden. 150 winter squash plants are now getting familiar with their new homes, and a good soaking rain tonight should help their roots take hold in the sandy soil. I decided to hold off planting the tomatoes until they get a little more root bound and until the weather warms up a wee bit.

The first picture is of the irrigation system I installed yesterday. The drip lines are running underneath the mulch layer to help conserve even more water, and I decided only to irrigate 6 rows (720 feet). The second picture is one of 27 comfrey plants that have poked their heads into the sunshine. Comfrey is a perennial herb known as a dynamic accumulator. It stores valuable nutrients in its leaves via an 8 foot tap root that can reach deep minerals. The leaves of comfrey contain 2 to 3 times as much potassium as manure, thus they can be used to make compost tea to water the garden. Each plant can live for 30+ years with proper TLC, and I look forward to having them around for a while. The third picture is the pile of bagged leaves I have been obsessively stealing from the neighborhood, and the last picture is the load of compost I picked up from Bees Ferry Landfill. It only cost $10 per ton and was perfectly enough to spread on three rows.

The no see-ums where terrible all day. Flying up my nose, making kamikaze dives into my eyes, getting stuck in my hair, flying up my pants, and all the while biting me over and over and over again. A good test of patience I guess, but it sucked nonetheless. Bug spray only worked for about 5 minutes, so I am going to get a bug net for my face ASAP tomorrow. The mosquitoes are only a few weeks away....yippeee.

This is how exhausted and dirty I looked upon leaving the farm: I went to Earth Fare to buy some beer and stopped in the produce section to sample some fresh cut orange slices. Now before I go any further, I will admit that my hands were dirty, but they were more stained than actually dirty (nothing was going to crumble off my fingers). I used the tongs and was VERY careful to drop the orange slice into my other hand as not to contaminate the entire display. I shut the lid, walked away, and turned to see an employee somewhat staring at me. He promptly walked over to the display and emptied the entire thing into the compost. I gave myself the benefit of the doubt that they were simply old oranges, but something tells me he was slightly offended at my appearance. I took a hint and steered clear of the cheese platter tempting my grumbling stomach. I blame the Davis genes on that move.

Oh...the soap is ready, so if you want a sample email me your address :)

Keeping my fingers crossed for rain tonight...