On Thursday morning I went over to see how my helper friend was progressing in the Small veg garden and noticed the volunteer cherry tomatoes had ripened. I had thought there were gourds growing also, but it looks more like tiny acorn squash. I also found a decent apple under the McIntosh tree.
He’s been chipping away at this garden for a couple weeks, here and there, lately to bring out the mulch hay I had stored there for the New Herb garden. But today we needed to make a real effort, as I realized I had to have garlic planted in the next 3 weeks and I had no place to plant it.
It will go along the east side of this Small vegetable garden. He’s working on a strip 10’ wide x 36’ long. Hopefully this will be enough for 4 rows @ 32’ long of garlic.
He’d pulled out the 6’+ high weeds and then started clearing out the undergrowth. He ended up using my broad fork to loosen the roots of weeds that had grown all summer. He got this 10’ x 10’ area cleaned out down to soil.
The Big rose is flowering its heart out, yet again. It often flowers into November. It would be a lot happier if I got it weeded and mulched, I’m sure.
I worked all morning in the New Herb garden, removing bark mulch from beds and putting down hay mulch to keep the bark mulch in the walkways. Then I went back to weeding and deadheading things like the echinacea paradoxa and the peppermint. I got these prunings from the peppermint, and plan to try drying them vs dehydrating. I’ve got a ½ gallon and a quart of dehydrated peppermint now.
New Herb garden, l-r, front to back: Row 7 all mulch; Row 6 thyme, hyssop, and mullein, the rest mulched; Row 5 pineapple sage, sage, balsam and honesty, plantain, hyssop, rest mulched; Row 4 echinacea paradoxa, balsam, balloonflower, and portulaca, peppermint, pennyroyal, marigolds, clary sage, arnica
I got Row 6 mulched except where the bales are. So 4 of the 7 rows are done. I hope to tackle another row tomorrow while my helper friend works in the Small garden.
My son got more firewood in the shed. He says there’s just 1 or 2 loads left. My husband was 30 miles offshore looking for his keeper cod.
A front came through about 1PM and we got a nice rain, so I didn’t have to water the wildflower seed. The temps plummeted into the 60’s and will drop into the 40’s by morning. I think a nice bowl of French onion soup will be supper tonight. My helper friend who made it has been after me to try it.