Multiconstruct

Tonight the government will be taking an hour of our time, from our sleep time and not our work time of course. They will give it back in the fall but without interest. i like the idea of an extra hours sleep but its the principle of the thing. Its a great example of unintended consequences though. they pushed it up by 3 weeks as part of the energy bill and lo and behold people take the extra hour of daylight and go driving so it uses more energy. its stimulative though, those folks are driving to the mall so they’re not going to change it back.

I got some nice gardening action in, even though i woke up with a headache (sinus turned migraine that ate up better than half the day). i turned up about a quarter of one of the beds. i have been double digging it and it was so much easier than last year when i was busting it out of sod. I shoveled in 100 pounds of sand as my only amelioration. I added a layer of leaves and covered that with 1/4 inch or so of coffee grounds (thank you starshmucks) in the fall and figured that would be fine, since the compost isn’t ready yet and i used up the last of my lama manure over the winter.

I planted carrots (from the Ferry Morse Company) and sowed in radishes right there with them (Ferry Morse ‘champion’ to the south and Livingston’s ‘Crimson Giant’ to the north). The Ferry Morse’s were left over from last year and they did pretty so-so. The carrots didn’t produce much and the radishes both underproduced and got woody. I doubled the amount of sand and it just can’t rain as much as it did last year which i think was the biggest problem. Plus rabbits i presume ate of the carrots at one point. I use hair and beard trimmings to scare off rabbits and i’ll try to be more aggressive on that this year, now that i know rabbits like carrots.

I switched my rows from west to east to north to south and when i got to the south end where i had my carrots and radishes last year i put in more Perry Morse ‘grand rapids’ leaf lettuce, which is doing real well in the cold frame. i am going to have some more thinnings with supper tonight. i read on the seed package you can do the same thing with radishes. oh, its a family tradition to plant radishes and carrots together. the radishes come up quick so you can see where the rows are and they are done by the time the carrots are needing the space. I like to grow things intensively because double digging everything by hand is a hell of a lot of work so i like to pile in as much stuff as possible. Plus i’d like to push the envelope on what you can produce in a backyard. Theres just so many reasons to do so: the cost of organics, producing it in the most local fashion, getting connected with the earth and with the food, a cushion against economic and social turmoil, its pretty, and its a lot of fun.

how does your garden grow? anyone doing anything yet?