Ending and Beginning

Today I dug 5 gallons of coffee grounds and maybe five gallons of grass clippings into the bed along the east fence where the meal corn was. That’s very sandy, gravelly soil, and it will be interesting to see how good I can make it.

I also chopped down all the sweet corn stalks in the west bed and gave that a rough digging. If you go in there with a sharp machete, you can chop up the stalks as you chop them down quite easily, as long as they haven’t fully dried yet.

Harvested some self-seeded amaranth from the west bed. I didn’t get any amaranth grain from last year — couldn’t figure out how to separate the grain from the plant. We’ll see if I can figure it out this year.

Spread about 10 gallons of grass clippings on top of the dug-up area in the west bed. Dug a trench near the top of the bed, where the soil is most gravelly, and buried 5 gallons of kitchen scraps.

I cut off four big, heavy sunflower seed heads today and put them in the greenhouse to dry. Those four had tipped over and were a foot or less from the ground, so I figured it was only a matter of time before something ate them. At any rate, they were done. I don’t have a specific plan for the sunflower seeds yet. We can eat them, or we can save them for bird seed. I wonder if there’s a hand-cranked sunflower seed sheller? I quick Google search turns up little for small-scale use.

I chopped the corn stalks from the meal corn in the row along the east fence, then dug in the stalks, weeds, grass, and old grass clipping mulch. The corn stalks chopped up much more easily (with a machete) when they were still a little bit green. It’s time to start digging coffee grounds any other organic matter into the soil wherever I can. That place right next to the fence is probably the worst soil we’ve got. It’s very sandy and without much organic matter — I see that spot as a challenge to see how good I can make bad soil.

I’m going to have to chop and dig in all the sweet corn stalks as soon as possible also.

More detail on the garden.

About two weeks ago, I harvested all the meal corn. It was a pretty disappointing quantity, less than one ear per stalk, but it wasn’t planted in the best soil we have. I’m looking forward to getting it dry and grinding it into meal.

The sweet corn was good, although not as good as last year — quite a few unfilled and small  ears. I blame its location as much as anything. We had a couple of ears eaten by raccoons, I think only a couple of ears because they didn’t discover it until late in the season.

The popcorn is looks great, it’s still green so I haven’t harvested yet. I read the seed packet later, and it takes 112 days to maturity, so that’s why it’s still green after all this time. In a short year, we might not have 112 days.

Tomatoes were late, probably because of the heavy, early mulch. The blight-resistant variety we used does not make the best-flavored tomatoes…but we don’t have blight.

Collards and kale have been very good, given the competition from weeds. Swiss chard exists but I don’t think we’ve eaten any all summer.

The echinacea I started from seed in 2009 bloomed beautifully this year. Will harvest and chop up before frost for tea.

M harvested onions a few days ago, about one third the yield of 2009.

Carrots look good, still in the ground.

Purslane was a little disappointing, but I wasn’t paying much attention to the garden when it was at its peak.

Got a few kidney beans. Man, you’d have to plant a lot of those to get enough to amount to anything.

The beets are giant. M picked a couple of those a few days ago, and I cooked them today. I sliced them into about 1 1/4″ slices, then boiled them for about half an hour, and they tasted just like beets! Not the best beets I’ve ever had, but definitely passable. After cooking them, I diced them and made Borscht (recipe modified from Joy of Cooking), and it came out great. Topped with some Greek yogurt at serving, it was excellent.

Looks like we’ll get a few mature butternut from those planted in the new part of the east garden. They started very slowly, but are doing okay now, spreading over the fence and out into the lawn. There are some large fruit in there, but probably less than we got last year.

We had some great, tall, big sunflowers with huge seed heads. I’m going to cut and hang those soon either for snacking or bird food.