Moving on

I’ve been getting organized for the academic year, and realized that with 3 kids in elementary school I will be living in my car every afternoon weekday until 6 pm until next June. Between that and work, I will have to be very much on top of things to pull off a fall/winter garden. And I’d like to, if only because I can’t bear the thought of a garden full of weeds. But this means I must catch up, and catch up quickly.

Which leads me to my confession. Remember those nematodes? I never put them out. I just let the garden maggots do their thing for much of the summer while I did mine. However I did store the nematodes properly in my refrigerator and they will keep that way for several months, so they ought to still be viable. (But yes, local friends, if you have been over and served food at my house, those asparagus and mushrooms were cheek by jowl with the sealed nematode container. You’re still here, reading this, so you don’t need to worry.) Today, I mixed them up according to the package directions, which involved 5 quarts of vermiculate and 2 quarts of water, and distributed them throughout my garden. I was able to be much more thorough in some areas and not so thorough in others, but I am hoping that since they are alive and in the animal kingdom they will distribute themselves as they see fit. Each bed got at least a few dollops of nematode mix, most got quite a bit and nicely distributed. While I was delivering nematodes I discovered that I do have one rather disheveled looking eggplant attempting to make a go of life.

But it is not all good news, of course. You get the down low here, not some sanitized version of my life that is designed to make you feel inadequate. I noted that there are a large number of unripe tomatoes. This sounds good, but I know I’ve had a large number of unripe tomatoes for some time, and I never get any ripe ones. I suspect they are getting eaten. Eaten by some diabolical creature on a personal mission to make my gardening life miserable. And the hollyhocks that I planted are infested. It looks pathognomonic for... something. The sort of situation where someone with more experience than I would look at the photo and say, “Ahhh, of course! You have X!” All I have to say for myself is that I’m learning to take some very atmospheric glamor shots of vermin.

I also went to Pacifica Garden’s Veggie Starts Sale. I bought some dino kale, spinach and broccoli seedlings. These are a good deal, because each 4” container contains multiple seedlings, which you can plant out individually. I got an entire row of spinach from one 4” pot, and 5 kale and 5 broccoli from each of their respective pots. For locals, there is one more day for the sale next Saturday 10 - 2, but they are starting to run out of some things. Not only did I buy some seedlings, I got some valuable information.

• The only beans that will grow over winter here are favas. I can try others, but they were doubtful of much success.
• It’s a good idea to grow favas on any area I’m not planting a harvestable crop. They keep the weed population down, and they are good for the soil.
• It’s also a poor prognosis for peas or carrots over winter, despite what the USDA agricultural zone says.
• The problem I was having with pumpkins and zucchini and end-rot is NOT a calcium deficiency. We live in such a humid climate that the fading flowers necrose and the dying tissue rots and the bacteria and fungus involved in the breakdown process spreads. The solution is to plant farther apart to promote air flow and to knock off all flowers once it is clear that a fruit is forming.
• Things that are good to grow in winter here: beets, radishes, kale, broccoli, lettuces, collard greens, bunching onions, garlic, spinach, chard. And favas of course.

I ripped out the last of the straggling peas and collected a small handful of the very last pods of the year, and planted the kale and the broccoli in its place (Bed H). I thought about digging under the pea plant carcasses, but frankly I was too tired to do any such thing. So it went into the compost. I put the spinach in the bed where the fava beans had been (Bed G). While I was at it, I harvested a couple more cucumbers and 3 decent zucchini. I put down a thin layer of redwood compost as mulch, with the intention to do something more robust later. While I was doing all this, I had an epiphany. The paper mulch I tried earlier in the year would probably work much better as a weed barrier if I put another conventional mulch on top of it, like bark or redwood compost, etc. I felt like an idiot standing there realizing the obvious and feeling that most days I have more hair than wit.