On Wednesday my intern was coming and she asked to bring a friend with her. So at 9AM we went out to the Big garden to start cleaning it up as it wasn’t raining and wouldn’t until mid afternoon.
I started along the north fence weeding and pruning dead off plants. This is the parsnips.
Next came the horseradish. My helper friend had planted the poor root that had been in the cold frame all summer in the fall last year. I didn’t have great expectations. But look at it now! It’s 3½’ tall and 3’ wide and has huge leaves.
Behind it is the rhubarb. It’s a bit bug eaten and sunburnt but doing very well.
The comfrey wasn’t happy about being tied up off the parsnips on one side and the peas on the other. There had been a lot of dead stuff that we pulled out. It has several volunteers also that need moved to the Little trees area.
While I was doing that, my intern had tackled the kale, removing the buggy and broken stalks.
Her friend had tackled getting all the grass out of the un-mulched garlic area. After cleaning out along the fences and pulling up the bolted basil, we started mulching. We did around the kale first then did this garlic area.
Then we started working up the pea area. We ran out of mulch from the driveway pile about half way up. The mulch was thin and still working, so we’d only been putting down skinny or half leaves here, enough to get through the winter.
I got the hay mess in the driveway raked up as I have another load of bark mulch coming on Thursday. This little pile is all that’s left from the second load. We finished about 11:30 and I was done in.
In the Small garden, there appeared to be only 1 weed high enough over the squash/cuke/melon leaves to be seen. So I’m not going to worry about cleaning out that garden until they all die back.
This is the Sugar Baby watermelon that grew through the fence and is hanging on it.
Inside the Small garden I could see this Tender Sweet Orange watermelon. It looks like it’s nearly ripe.
I now have a tenant that’s offered to give me 2 hours a day doing whatever needs done in place of some of the rent. So I’m hoping over the autumn I start to get caught up on some of the work around here.
On Thursday no one’s coming, it’s to be cool and cloudy, and I’m thinking of pulling out the bean plants and finishing the weeding in the south end of the Big garden. I expect there’s tomatoes needing tied up too.