Ending and Beginning

Watered buckwheat, kale, chard, beets, kohlrabi seeds/seedlings. Mowed lawn and dumped about 20 gallons of grass clippings into garden to cover areas of bare ground.

Had the idea of using the ‘pit,’ the space just south of the greenhouse, as garden area. Why not? It gets full sun and isn’t used for anything else.

Kale is fast becoming one of my favorite vegetables and I’ve been eating it twice a day at least. It’s good raw or cooked, tastes good with many things or by itself in a salad, is nutritious, frost-tolerant, and very easy to grow. It’s one of those rare vegetables that is not constantly looking for a reason to die. I want to try growing some late and early in the greenhouse.

Also, saw two honey bees (and several bumblebees) visiting catnip flowers in the garden.

that was fast, what, 5 days?

and some other pics from the garden today:

Dug 5 gallons of used coffee grounds from Erika’s into the ex-daffodil bed yesterday. Today, I planted that bed with one 4.5′ row of each:

Kale
Beets
Kohlrabi
Chard

Also planted buckwheat in about a 2.5′ x 10′ area where I’ve dug potatoes. Planted as green manure, will harvest grain if possible. That’s my second attempt at growing grain, after the amaranth I planted in the Spring.

The amaranth is not doing good — I noticed today that it’s budding, and it’s only about 3′ tall, so we won’t get much grain out of it. I planted that on top of freshly-turned over sod, and that’s probably why it’s doing so poorly. I think after my experience with the amaranth and the butternut this year I can safely say that planting on top of freshly-turned sod is a poor idea, with the exception of potatoes. They seem to be able to grow and make a crop anywhere.

That’s okay, though. There’s not a lot more sod I have immediate plans to turn into garden space.

The bed where I planted the buckwheat was sod 4 months ago. It was pretty easy digging today.