In a space approximately 3 x 2 ft, in a 5 x 3 raised bed that is crowded full, about five pounds of beautiful potatoes were harvested.
The space pictured was 2/5ths red clover for tea and nitrogen fixing, and 3/5ths potatoes. After harvesting, the area then received fresh garden compost mixed with on large bag of Back to the Roots raised bed mix (peat-free). Watered for the worms and microbes, mulched with straw, and watered again.
This area will be seeded with Fall through November yummies such as Brussels Sprouts, chard, and basil. Seeding will happen this week. I’m looking forward to it all since the chard failed earlier (too hot), basil was scrawny (though partially shaded), and Brussels Sprouts would not have had a chance!
Here’s a video of humming birds coming for their before-bed tank-up. Notice that the red feeder (furthest from the camera) has even more than the one near the camera. This ritual is repeated starting before dawn for a couple of hours and in the evening for about two hours. Mesmerizing. Like a campfire.
Super pleased with this area. Corn and beans on the left, ditch with deep straw, and native vine in the middle, rattlesnake and Blue Lake green beans on the right, with Kabocha squash here and there. In November the middle will be laid with cardboard, compost, and straw mulched for planting next season; and let the outsides rest. Winter snows needed by all, plus worms, will make short order of the cardboard!
And, if a store or farmers market has been your life-long source of lettuce, you might not have ever witnessed the amazing transformation lettuce makes as it completes its life cycle and sets seed.
These 3 ft. spires are romaine, red leaf, frizzle, and a pointed-leaf lettuce at full maturity, flowering, and setting seed. Seed will, then, be gathered and dried for growing next season.
Outer, delicious leaves are eaten through season. We are the grazers; and the plant simply grows more leaves. But, at some point, the temperatures are too hot for the lettuce which signal it to “bolt.” The chemistry inside the leaves starts to change to bitter, the plant puts all its energy into growing as tall as possible, sets flowers at the top that are nectar laden, inviting small pollinators. There is so much nectar to these small flowers that if you run your hand over them, your hand becomes sticky. The plant is left in the bed to complete its flowering and drying process. Then, before the seeds fall to the ground, one clips the tops of the plants for complete drying. I put them in paper lunch bags and hang them.
Hope you’re growing season is going well and beautifully!
