garden update

monday's mountain musings

Busy, busy, busy is the word around the homestead. I cleaned the greenhouse today and 11 trays of fall seedlings were planted. Manthing worked some more on the goat shed and split some wood and Measa worked on the pathways and stairs to the terraces, did some weed eating, and then got the carport area cleaned up. The stairs to the terraces really show how steep of a hillside they are actually on. What were we thinking? At the rate he is working we will be building new beds before the end of summer just to have things to do. Ain't many people that can tire me out working consistently but he certainly can!
The gardens are coming along very well and I am still working on a big update for them. I am in my final week of yet another semester of classes and the internet here has been very wonky for the last several days so I am very flustered with things lately. Research and making videos is difficult to do when one has intermittent internet access.
Tonight I made a garlic scape carbonara for dinner. It was quite tasty, simple to make and very cheap too. Rather than post the recipe I will just give the link to where I found it. I added some summer squash and zucchini into ours and we had the last of our spring greens to go along with it.
http://sarahscucinabella.com/2009/06/29/garlic-scape-recipe-garlic-scape-carbonara/

making walkways equals more junk beds

After having the terraced beds on the hillside, for a few years now, we came to realize we are not billy goats and we certainly are not getting any younger and something needed to be done. Today, Measa began work on that project. I happened to look over and notice the piles of soil he was making and quickly decided that I needed to make a couple new junk gardens before they washed down the hill in the rains this afternoon. It just so happens that last week we had another box fan die and I had a couple tires laying around that needed a new home.

I went and fetched the tires while manthing got me a chunk of old rug and a big bag of cans and we got to work. We use the rugs under the junk beds for water retention purposes and to make weed eating around them easier. The old cans are used to fill the edges of the tires so that we do not need quite as much dirt. It is amazing the number of cans that can go into a truck tire. While I was filling the tires with cans the fellers filled me buckets of soil. Within just a few minutes we had 3 new small growing beds made and planted with peppers and parsley.
The walkways and steps for the terraces will take several more days of work and will give me another nice pile or three of soil to make use of. Now I just need to figure out what I will use to make a few more beds with when the time comes.