Heriz-Smith

We saw Eliot Coleman speak yesterday at the Common Ground fair. He was showing his new method of quickly creating a 2 row hoop house. It looked like a nice easy way of doing this. The one question I have is that because he and Johnny’s couldn’t get a device on the market that bent metal conduit in time, he was using PVC conduit.

We’ve heard for some time the issues that seem to exist with PVC and with the release of the Body of Evidence report, I was a little surprised and disappointed to see PVC used here. Not wantingn to spend the money (and lacking the skill) to bend mental conduit, I wonder if I could cut some saplings for the same purpose. I think I’ll give this a try later this week. I’ll only need about 5 for the short beds I plan to use it with…

Just planted the last three rows of potatoes in the new bed. German Butterball in the 8th bed, Yellow Finn in the 9th, Salem in the first half of the 10th and our own German Butterballs from last year in the last half.

Yesterday morning I planted the chives that I’d dug up from the edge of the field in the flower garden.

This morning i put the soil from the path on another row of potatoes. Now, is that exciting, or what?

I also dug up some chives for Laurie to put in the flower garden.

Yesterday, I covered one row of potatoes, just as they were showing through the soil, with about 2 inches or so shoveled up from the path. I then covered the row with about 8-10 inches of straw. This morning I covered another row with soil, but am out of straw,need to get more.

I also planted three parsley at the end of three rows - garlic, leek, and the empty bed where I plan to sow carrots.

Today I did a lot of weeding and edging. I also put in a lot of parsley, basil and marigolds along the ends of the beds in the main garden - mostly along the inside, bordering the path, but some on the outside edge too. I really should get some photos in here.

I finished planting the bed of Lincoln leeks this morning. About 100 in. I will plant the remaining flat close together in a bed to grow as finger thick leeks.

Not all, but I got 75 of the Lincoln leeks planted. We could really use some rain - the soil was so dry that it tumbled into the holes as I tried to drop the leeks in.

Some rain would be very nice right about now.

I noticed two days ago what looked like deer damage to the Aquilegia that I had had transplanted from the front of the barn. Laurie noticed deer tracks in the soil so we’re pretty sure that’s what it was. Luckily, they haven’t visited the vegetable garden yet.