Let's see...95-degree afternoons, a weekend trip to Arkansas followed by a Saturday trip to Houston...okay, I get it. Sunday I finally committed to a fall garden by ordering seeds, so I got out there to start preparing the soil. Yes, it was mid-90s and sunny, but I had plenty of sweat on order. I pulled two wheelbarrow loads of weeds, dug about four small potatoes, pulled the last of the carrots--
As mentioned before, I'm no longer a carrot-growing disaster. I can grow carrots! These were put in late and it's way too late to be pulling them, but they taste fantastic.
From now on, I'm a carrot farmer and here are the rules: start early;
mist daily until they're established;
thin rigorously;
and most importantly, plant amid a nurse crop of radishes. (The fast-growing radishes break up the soil and shelter the tiny, delicate sprouts of carrot from sun and rain.( If you can tickle out a radish or two out without disturbing the baby carrots, all the better, but if not, sacrifice the poor things. Besides, how bad a sacrifice is it to a radish not to get eaten?
When I dumped all that green stuff into the compost bin, it was full. So I debated whether to add some soil to the top of the bin or go ahead and turn it over like I'd planned. There was still daylight left and I had the thought--quit talking about turning the compost pile over and just do it!
So there! I moved the top layers to a neighboring pile and found something magical at the bottom. Seriously magical--compost. Not as "done" as one might want, but perfectly usable. I took a load and a half to the garden and I'm still not done. See how boring this looks?
It's not boring to me nor to any other gardener. Trust me on this one.
So my fall garden looks like dirt but seeds are in the mail. How I'm going to plant anything if I can't stand to pull the old plants up, I dunno. How can you stand to pull up a plant that's still blooming?
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