Drawing the New Herb garden for 2021 by oil lamp light
I have to get the garlic planted before October 15th. Actually I like to have it in the ground as close to October 1 as I can, but it HAS to be done by the 15th.
This meant I had to update the garden plans on the computer so I would know where alliums had been planted in the last 3 years and avoid those areas. I spent Tuesday afternoon doing this.
This is the Small garden and in 2019 and 2020 all that was planted was the garlic, shown in bright red. If there had been alliums in any other part of the garden there would be red warnings. So you can see where we put some of the garlic, the light purple areas.
The other problem I have with alliums is they need full sun and I have late afternoon shade on the west side of both gardens. That’s why there are no red warnings in that area in this garden.
This is the Big garden. You can see where I have planted across the garden, but if you recall the onions planted across the top this year did poorly on the left ⅔ of the row. There’s not a lot of places left to plant here. But I did find 4 rows (in purple) to squeeze in the garlic around all the flowers still planted in this garden.
My intern was here on Wednesday and I showed her what I was doing and she finished off the plans on the computer.
I had also spent early Wednesday morning with oil lamps drawing paper maps to take to the gardens. We’d lost power for 3 hours from a high wind event and lots of rain; there was 2.75” in my new rain gauge. Once we’d finished on the computer, we transferred the info to the maps then went out to make sure it was correct. We weren’t out there 15 minutes when it started to pour again, so we quit.
On Thursday my helper friend is here and we will be planting garlic in the Big garden. If we finish there, we will tackle moving the black plastic in the Small garden so we can plant there.
On Friday when he is here he will be moving all the wood out of the addition to the barn, then continue garlic planting. In the meantime, I have to find mulch for the Small garden, as the 20 bales I have won’t go far…