I Got Lucky

October is a busy month, it sneaks in and sneaks out really fast. This month started out very hot and very dry which set a lot of gardeners back as far as following through with what would normally be the transition plan. Mimi and I didn’t want to plant our fall plants too early with the temperatures being in the 90’s for the first 3 weeks of October. It had us a little anxious because the deeper into October and November we go the more cramped we get for time to get our gardens at home planted up for fall. We started making plans for all the things that have to happen before we can start planting and realized that we had a lot to do to even get to that point. We started in our vegetable garden area. We finally pulled just about everything that was left in our raised beds. We didn’t really use our veggie raised beds for much produce this past summer because we experimented with how far we could take last falls flowers that we grew for the MRA tour of gardens.

We just pulled last years Foxgloves, Snapdragons and Poppies two weeks ago. We got them all the way through even though it wasn’t the best look, we wanted to see if it could be done, it can. We did grow a few tomato’s and peppers and we keep one of our raised beds full of herbs for cooking but the boxes were mainly full of flowers. Once we had that all cleaned up we noticed that our beds needed to be topped off with some good ole compost so we could plant our leafy greens that we love so much. I brought home a pallet of mushroom compost and mixed it evenly with our magic soil, Sun Gro. Sun Gro is the soil that we use to grow all of our annuals and perennials that we grow for sale at Garden Works. We love that soil because it does really well for growing plants in pots, stays wet enough for long enough.

When it comes to using that soil for planting in beds or raised beds we like to mix it with something with a little weight to it. Mushroom compost has proven to be just the right thing to mix it with, it does a great job of producing a great root system since it has a small charge of nitrogen and it seems to hold the lightweight potting soil in place. We can control the amount of water the plants receive when we are greenhouse growing, we can let plants dry down just right before watering while they are still growing in their pots. When we begin to use that same soil in our beds we are a little more susceptible to Mother Natures whims so we feel like the compost addition helps the plants feel a little more like they are in a setting that will work in a wet season or a dry season. We have had great results so we are going to stick with it. Once we had all the beds topped off, overly full since we know it will settle down over time, we topped it off with pine bark mulch to protect that soil from the scorching sun.

We will leave the mulch there where it is appropriate to have mulch such as with our lettuces, kales and herbs. I will scoop off the mulch for any direct seeding that I do such as carrots. I will get the soil really wet, direct sow the carrots and cover them with wet cardboard for darkness. I will check the seeds in 3 or 4 days, as soon as I see seed sprouts I will take the cardboard off to allow the full sun to do its thing. Later I will have to thin the seedlings out to about 3 inches apart. Carrots will not grow well if they are jammed in there too tight, you will either get very small carrots or they will be malformed. A couple of weeks ago I got nailed by the Covid, I keep forgetting that stuff is still lurking around. I felt flu ish for a few days then I was stuck at the house for a few more days while I waited long enough to not spread it around especially at work. During that time I designed an irrigation system that would work in our raised beds. We had a system that neither of us really liked. Our original system was made of PVC pipes with drip lines coming from them. We never really got the coverage that we wanted and the spaghetti lines were always in our way.

This time I went with a valve on the side of each raised bed that is attached to soaker hoses that get the soil evenly moist throughout. I can soak the whole garden in 10 minutes without getting the foliage wet or I can do one planter box at a time as the garden diminishes over the course of a season. I put the soaker hoses under the mulch so the water wouldn’t evaporate as quickly during the blazing hot months, so far we like it and our lettuces and other leafy greens are looking very healthy. While I was stuck inside with the covid I ordered every part I needed from Amazon, they showed up on my front porch the next day. I set up a factory in a room in our house and glued it all together so that I would have to make a minimal amount of cuts to snap the system together. I always felt pretty good in the mornings and would deflate in the afternoons so I had everything ready for a morning dash out to the garden where it all snapped together perfectly. I had laid the soaker hoses out in the sun the day before so they wouldn’t be so stiff so I was able to set this all up and test run it before I pooped out around noon. By the time Mimi got home that day we had a new system ready to go. I got the sparkling happy eyes from her so my mission was accomplished. As far as the rest of our yard that we will be adding winter hardy plants, we have begun cleaning out the beds so we can refresh the soil so that when the time allows for us to start planting it will be a breeze.

This month is the month that we got married 33 years ago (on the 16th). This the same month that both of our children got married, Max and Madeline on the 26th 2 years ago and Mia and Cody on the 18th last year. We will all get together to celebrate our happy marriages when we can. Of course I called the irrigation system our anniversary present to each other but I think there will more to come, it is hard to celebrate our marriage, it has been so rich and fun and funny at times its hard to say it with a gift so I try to be nice every day and she puts up with my shenanigans for so long, I really appreciate that. I got lucky.