Crazy gardeners

It has continued to rain, though it only drizzled a little today. The last thing I did this evening was to clear a 6x6 patch of weeds (pulling them by hand) so that I could put down a 9x12 dropsheet. It's supposed to rain again tomorrow, and I'm hoping that if it clears up on Monday as it's supposed to, I'll be able to prepare two more corn beds.

Yesterday was amazing. It was sunny with the barest hint of sprinkles once or twice; I spent six hours out there, and managed to get three beds to the plantable stage: the pepper bed (finally), the beans, and the first bed of corn. Six hours sounds like a long time for just that, but, well, I'm nuts.

I'm feeding the corn by trenching (so that I don't have to dig up the whole 4x6 bed) and watering by flood. For each of the four rows to have both food and water, I dug and amended two trenches, between rows 1 and 2 and between rows 3 and 4. Then I filled in the trenches, but left them depressed for the irrigation... and, because I'm silly, I decided to line them with stone.

I now have what looks like small flagstone paths between the rows, with jasper in a zigzag pattern and other ornamental, flat stones filling in between. They're fit rather closely, but they should let water through evenly. It was rather soothing, fitting the stones together, and they consistently fit tightly for some reason. I had no trouble finding shapes that would fit, though I had to dig in the rock pile to get enough flat stones for the whole thing.

Next I pulled the weeds in the bean bed, evened out the ground (it had been potatoes last, and still had the mounded earth with a depression in the middle), drove stakes, and outlined more flood channels. After tamping down the path in the center of the U-shaped bed, that was done... beans feed themselves, and don't need heavy amendments.

Lastly, I dug out the pepper bed, avoiding most of the big milkweed plants, and amended it with grain. I may abandon the third of the five squares in that bed, and leave it to the milkweed; I refuse to pull it if I have a choice, and it'll interfere with a pepper plant there. That'll take me down to ten in-ground slots unless I consign one of the four herb beds to a pepper. I'll think about it; basil grows well in a pot.

Add to that the weeding and general cleanup, and I felt really good. And really stiff. My poor knees... they felt it when I knelt down again today, but the hot tub is up to temperature again and I'll use it a little later.

Today I went to the Tilden plant sale, which has almost exclusively natives. I missed the thimbleberries, apparently (though I was told that they'll propagate them if they know there's a demand), but I did get my redbud. Tiny thing, I'll probably keep it in a pot for one more year before I plant it out. It looks healthy, though. I also picked up a native cinquefoil which grows to about 18" tall, and two more Brodaieas -- one of them is my favorite flower in the world. I ran across a Harvest Lily in a park back in high school and have lusted after it ever since, but only one catalog I know of carries Brodaiea elegans bulbs, and only ships them in fall (for an exorbitant price). And here they were, sitting in a one-gallon pot at Tilden. Mine!

So that's three Brodaiea species, though the other one I picked up from Tilden may be the same one I bought at the nursery. I'd have to check.

I went to the Botanical Gardens and bought seeds for California Poppy and Golden Lupine, then went to Navlet's (no white dogwoods yet, still, damn it) and grabbed the usual blue lupine seed, plus some for a red Cosmos, Veronica, Sweet William, and the corn I needed today. I added a French Lavender (again, small but potbound nonetheless), thyme, and purple culinary sage. Then I came home and sowed flat after flat of flowers. Those clear plastic strawberry containers work really well as incubators...

I planted the corn (Golden Cross Bantam, the best sweet corn I've found so far; it would have to be, given that I try for open-pollinated when possible, and this is a hybrid) and the Chinese yard-long beans along one side of the bean trellis. Then I sowed a variety of popbeans in two containers, figuring that I want to make sure they don't rot out there, given the rarity and difficulty in getting them. I sowed all of the white ones that I harvested from the one variety that bloomed without trouble (they want 12-hour days to flower, while we have 17-hour days) and several others to try... I have an idea involving a cardboard baffle to cut out most of the morning daylight during the summer, to try to give them 12-hour days. We'll see whether it works; they have to sprout first. I left the containers in the potting shed, which is somewhat warmer by dint of being attached to the house, so they shouldn't get too cold or too wet.

I really am crazy -- I found myself laying rock down for the irrigation on the beans. It's a much smaller strip, made up of much smaller rocks, but it looks cool. Like a little flagstone path. I hope it helps even out the water.

The tomatoes are starting to unfold leaves again. I didn't plant the peppers yet, but that'll probably happen on Monday or Tuesday.

The plan with the corn is to have four plots and five batches. The first is sweet corn, which we should have by about July 4. Three weeks from now I'll sow what I'm calling "purpopple" -- my purple selection from Cherokee Long-ear. The idea is to breed a purple popcorn; I think that would rock. Three weeks after that will be strawberry popcorn, then three weeks later will be a batch of the original Cherokee Long-ear. There's no such thing as too much popcorn. :)

By the time another month passes, the sweet corn should be ready to be pulled, and I'll put in another crop of corn in that first bed; it could be either another round of strawberry, or another round of purpopple. We'll see what I feel like at the time.

Next up is to dig two more corn beds, the cukes, the melon/squash plot, and amend the sweet potato plot before building up the stones for its raised bed. Everything but the cuke bed is under plastic now. I need to get more grain, then I can add that to the coffee grounds I have already and dig the summer squash holes, start throwing stuff into the melon bed, and amend the sweet potato bed. Oof, I should grab the sweet potatoes themselves and start making slips, if it's warm enough. And grab some alfalfa for the other corn beds, and do the last planning on the watering system, then buy and install it...

April is always when things speed up to a frenetic pace. It's worse this year because of all the rain. At least I'm making progress; I've heard complaints from other gardeners, that they can't even set foot out there. I guess that's one advantage to having dirt paths everywhere -- I want those compacted, because then they're that much more solid for summer. And the dropcloths have paid off in spades (ouch) because I can keep digging. Yay for foresight!