her able hands

When I get home in the evenings, I should be getting my next moves organized, but instead I head straight out to the garden (after a change of clothes). It’s therapy, and right about now, I need therapy, or at least some anger management and help with focusing on the job at hand while I’m at work.

Last night I tried to remedy the problem of piss-poor, dusty, chalky soil in the chard and pea bed. Those were the first things I planted, before I ordered manure, and they seem to have hit a growth plateau. I cultivated the soil around the plants, yanked out more violets and fed them to the chickens, watered the heck out of the plants, then side-dressed the rows with a couple of inches of manure, topped with a layer of grass clippings and straw. It feels so good to accomplish something that’s beneficial to myself and to someone or something else. The row now looks neat, refreshed and ready for the rest of the season. I swear the chard leaves have more color already. I’m sure it probably will end up most benefiting the rabbit and the woodchuck who hippity-hop and widdle-waddle up to the buffet every day, but I’m hoping the prickly straw keeps them away for a little bit and gives the leaves a chance to grow big enough for me to harvest some. I’m dying to try my Rustic Chard and Feta Tart on the grill.

Next I cultivated around the cucumbers. They’re throwing their fourth leaf already, and most of them look good, though a few have some yellowing and rusty spots and beginning veins of powdery mildew. I’m going to spray them with milk tonight, having read on You Grow Girl that tomato plants like milk. I then did a little Google search and found that milk is helpful for cucurbits, brassicas and tomatoes for any kind of fungal problems, and provides a nice jolt of calcium to boot. I may need to try something else for the rusty looking spots, I’m not 100% sure that’s a fungus.

I watered the cukes deeply and put down about six inches of straw around them, as well. Their bamboo trellis waits above them, to support them as they climb. I WILL make pickles this season, I know I will, because I found one more quart jar from two years ago, so it’s a sign, don’t you know.

I should have stopped at this point to get inside and start dinner, but I wanted to water the tomatoes again. Blossom end rot ruined last year’s crop and while it’s a calcium deficiency, it’s caused by uneven watering which makes it hard for the roots to pick up calcium from the soil. I’m hoping I’ve remedied the lack of calcium in the soil with the crushed eggshells I continue to mix in under the straw, and I’ve been making sure to water the roots deeply every evening while we’re having such hot days with evaporating winds. Because ding, dang, dongit, I’ll have salsa and sauce in my pantry this winter, too, right next to the pickles.

Okay. I should have been in the shower twenty minutes ago. I’ll get out there with the camera this weekend to show you all what I’m babbling on about. Really, things are looking so good!

Technorati Tags: garden, organic gardening, organic fungicide, therapy

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