2.7.10

My soaker hose is doing a little too much soaking. So I'm going to patch it. Yes, it would be cheaper to replace it, but that would mean I would have to take it out of the bed, and now it's all wound up around a million plants! So instead, I'll spend way more than a new hose costs in repair parts and bandaids for the inevitable busted fingers. Grrr!

Step 1: Turn on soaker. Cleverly point the screw driver and the scissors toward the hose, on each side of the leak.

Step 2: Run back to the spigot and turn water off. Run back to the hose and cut it as indicated by the cleverly used screwdriver and scissors.

Step 3: Tools of the trade. A 1/2" ...eh, repair-er thingy and two clamps. Hey, Guess What Home Depot?! When I ask for 1/2", I really do MEAN 1/2". Stop trying to sell me the damn 3/4" hose repair kits, because they don't fit on 1/2" soakers!!

Step 4: Slide the loosened clamps onto each side of the hose.

Step 5: Insert the plastic thingy.

Step 6: Slide clamps toward center and tighten. Be sure to lose your grip on the tiny wet clamps and scrape your fingers all to hell. Several times.

Onions, buttercrunch lettuce, rogue arugula, and garlic. This arugula planted itself.



Radishes. Yeah. Not much going on here.







Cleaned the heck out of this bed and put down a new layer of mulch. And Trent found me that cool bowling pin. It's HEAVY! Good for whackin' moles!

Trying to get ahead of that nasty, weedy grass. I went through this entire bed with a fine toothed comb to get out every inch of grass and root that I could. Hopefully this'll help keep that stuff from getting such a chokehold on this bed later this year. Fingers crossed! Also, planted 5 new roses right by the street in the hopes that once they're grown, people will think twice about walking through this bed. Yes, I KNOW this is city property, but still, it's planted to the hilt! Stop walking on it all! Yeesh!

Brassica Bed Numbah TWO! Raddichio and red lettuces and beet and endive, etc, etc, etc!

Onions, Mibuna, more beets, French Sorrel...

Lots herb. The legal kind!

Brassica Bed Numbah ONE! Yeah, I flipped 'em on you. Kale, kohlrabe, and a buncha other stuff!

Weeds, an artichoke (dead center), and the once-hot-pink-now-pale-pink snakie from Toy Joy. To scare all the birds. And, um. Other things.

A better pic of the artichoke. A couple of those other green things are ornamentals that I'll move to the sidewalk bed later this spring.

This is that same ol' bed that I always take pictures of for no reason. Nothing hidden in it. Look at the arugula in the front row, second from the right. Respectable, but manageable, right? Just wait a few more weeks... Arugula does REALLY well in my garden. Too well.

Strawberries and mint - a good combination for a refreshing dessert, but not so much to plant together. Yes, I know how invasive mint is. But I got cuttings of about 10 different varieties, and thought, "I'll just root them here, and move them before they take over". Looks like I didn't manage to get to it in time... The varieties I have include chocolate mint (mmmm, smells JUST like an Andes mint), orange mint, candy mint, pennyroyal, pineapple mint, sweet pear mint, spearmint... I'm going to have to dig this whole bed up and try to salvage cuttings of the mints, as well as the strawberries. I might even have to "solarize it" after I clean it out. That is, cover it in black plastic and let it cook all summer. I can't BELIEVE I was so naive about mint!

Rogue arugula, getting ready to take over the world!! Look how it OWNS those onions!

This is my potato bucket. I read about this method of growing potatoes where you plant them in a deep bucket, but in only a couple of inches of good soil - just enough to cover the potato bits. Once they begin to grow leaves/vines, you raise the soil level. Then the vine puts on more 'taters in the new layer of soil as it continues to grow skyward. So I'm going to try it out. There are red potatoes in here. I'm going to do another bucket with multi-colored French fingerlings.