In the first pic, you can see the row covers my neighbor generously let me borrow for the season. I covered what is left of the spinach (some has been eaten by critters), and all of the transplanted collards and watercress in the rightmost bed. I have no idea if the covers are needed, or how much they will protect those crops, but I'll know in a month or so.
The soft neck garlic that I replanted from this years harvest sprung up pretty quickly. It was planted on October 28th, and it was definitely up before November 16th. I can't remember exactly how long it took. Neither of the two hard neck varieties have come up yet, but the leaf much has been shredded so finely that I'm sure they will be able to poke out through the mulch when they are ready.
This year I borrowed a gas powered lawn mower from yet another neighbor to help with the task of shredding the leaves. It was way easier than using the push power like I did last year. The main additional benefit is the vacuum effect it has on the tiny little pieces. As far as procedure, I ended up letting the bag fill all the way up, and then just shredding the entire pile of leaves in one pass, even though it wasnt getting picked up by the bag anymore. Then, I made second passes until the bag filled up (every other minute) and that is what I dumped into the pile. This worked really well. I'm guessing that the whole pile will decompose even faster this year, but only time will tell.
I could have let the asparagus go a little longer, but it got yellow/brown enough that I decided to finally cut it down. I spread a thin layer of leaf mulch on the ground, and then just placed the cut ferns on top of the whole area. I'm not sure if there is a better way to lay the ferns down...
No comments:
Post a Comment