Mid-August
Category: Boston
Garden Plot Clean-Up
This morning, I spent a couple of hours weeding my plot and spreading salt marsh hay that I had left over from weeding the outside garden bed and fertilizing and mulching it earlier this morning. The outside bed is now pretty much all set until the fall, when I am hoping to get spring bulbs in the ground. I mulched that bed heavily, hoping to suppress the weeds. Fingers crossed.
My plot is now ready for summer. The zucchini are coming in, the first tomatoes are showing up on the vine, the leeks have recovered, the winter squash is spreading, and the garlic is almost ready for harvest.
Communal Garden Bed Progress
It has been about a month since we started planting the new communal garden bed outside of our community garden. The area was cleared in early May, the Southwest Corridor Park crew built the garden bed border, and we spread compost. Planting for this season is now pretty much completed. We mulched the left side of the bed (native perennials) and the blueberry bush (very accessible on the very right of the bed close to the path) with bark mulch and will now mulch the rest of the bed with hay. We fertilized once and will fertilize a second time in the next few days. The plants are coming along nicely, even though we had to relinquish some plants (mainly kale, but also Zinnias, marigolds and other flowers) to the resident rabbits.
Planting the Outside Bed
Yesterday, my daughter and I spent two hours planting the mixed communal flower and vegetable bed outside our community garden. The Park took out some old overgrown diseased shrubs three weeks ago, built a cobble stone border and added a layer of compost. Now it was (is) up to us to fill the bed and take care of it. Our vision is to create a bed for the community that is both beautiful and useful, so we are planning a combination of flowers, herbs, vegetables and fruit.
Towards the left, where it only gets morning sun, we planted native perennials (New York Aster, Sweet Goldenrod, Lance-Leaved Coreopsis, Eastern Bluestar), and creeping thyme. In the center, we added Swiss chard, planted squash against the fence and sowed sunflowers directly behind the shed.
In the right section, close to the border, within reach for passers-by are small-fruiting and cherry tomatoes and a blueberry bush. Plus Black-Eyed Susan, marigold, lavender and annual asters, as well as daylilies against the fence.
There is still a lot of space for other plants, and the bed will be filled over the next couple of weeks with dahlias, other flowers, strawberries (hopefully) and more squash and other vegetables and herbs.
Hay There!
This afternoon, I mulched the rest of my plot with marsh hay. I also harvested some chard and kale and now have only some chard and leeks growing. I plan to overwinter most of my leeks. The plot is now ready for winter.
Night and Day
I love all the flowers on my porch this summer. These here are cosmos Rubenza and Bright Lights. I will definitely move to exclusively herbs and flowers next year. Almost there: For vegetables, I currently only have one Thai pepper and some chard and lettuce growing on my back porch. None of them are doing particularly well. Next year, I will do only spring vegetables (radishes and salad greens) and then only herbs and flowers in the summer and fall.
Red Currant Season
Yesterday, I harvested about three cups of red currants. This hardly made a dent in this year’s bounty. The bush in our backyard has grown a lot over the past couple of years. This morning, I decided to make these red currant crumb bars for breakfast. They came out perfect.
Porch Arugula
I harvested a huge bowl of arugula on my back porch today. Now there are only leaf lettuces left in that big pot and they have all the space they need. The radishes, flowers and herbs are looking good. I also transplanted a Thai pepper into a big container yesterday (bought as, sadly, none my my seeds germinated).
