Wednesday, July 7, 2021

weeding/harvesting in-between showers

We wound up working in shifts in the garden today . . . in between rain showers! Donna, Jonathan, Marcelo and Akiko were the first shift. As Jonathan reported earlier, he and Donna spent a little over an hour weeding, fixing the flagstone path.

Els and I arrived later. Aside from the mandatory stint of weeding (including some work on the raspberry patch which we think could use some pruning), we decided to see if one of the large metal trellises I had schlepped over would work to extend our cucumber support. First we needed to move the sprawling volunteer cherry tomato near the wooden trellis, which none of us has had the heart to pull out. We decided to spare it once more and moved it down to the end of the bed to the side of the cilantro (which we are hanging onto for the seeds). We'll see if it survives and, if so, if it produces yummy tomatoes. Here's the new spot:

We then positioned the trellis and think it has promise for letting the cucumbers really grow. It will need some stabilizing from Jonathan and/or Marcelo!

Here are two views:

Otherwise, Els turned the compost and harvested some purslane.  

We call this a combo weeding/harvesting as the purslane is sprouting up all over the place (likewise lambsquarters--both very nutritious but invasive). I pulled some wild grape vines and another vine off the St. John's Wort in the pollinator garden. It is now in bloom and, on a less rainy day, it will be swarming with happy bees.

The lettuce is starting to come up in the lasagna bed. This is great news as it may be time to pull out the older lettuce in the other plots if it's getting bitter. With that ending, it will be good to have another crop coming up. Our haul for the food pantry will likely be smaller this coming week. Next up will be cucumbers and tomatoes, but those will take a while!





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