I didn’t sleep well last night. I woke for no reason at all at 3am and didn’t see the inside of my eyelids again for another hour and a half, and not for lack of trying either. So, I had to try even harder to Make May Count today. It would have been so easy to just rest this one out, but no, it’s Wednesday and Row Three was waiting.
Fortunately, row three is an easy row. The first bed has asparagus in it, and it has been weeded within an inch of its life for months and so it there isn’t much going on there in the way of interlopers. The asparagus themselves are starting to fade and it won’t be long before they turn yellow and I can cut them down and add goodies to the top of the soil. All the asparagus bed needed was some watering. It doesn’t make sense to feed it as it dies out.
The next bed is pretty much empty bar a few painted mountain corn stalks that are still a shade of fresh green, so there was no point doing anything there, there wasn’t even any weeds. I must be doing something right. The next bed is the garlic which is still popping up causing much excitement – for me. No one else seems that interested!
The leafy green bed is thriving and will provide plenty of winter crunch. Having said that the Asian greens are almost ready and so I’m trying to decide if I should sow more or not. There is time and there is space. At the other end, the celery and celeriac have picked up and look like they much prefer the cooler weather!
Next door to those is the beans. There are a few straggling kidney beans on their second round, but the lima beans and the snake beans at each end are still going strong. I’ll just leave them too it and see what happens. I have no idea what that will be. Hopefully it will end in a large harvest of giant white lima beans, dried on the plant and ready to chuck in casseroles. I know for sure I’ll be starting them much early this season. But there are no weeds in this bed either, so I just watered and fed them.
Beside that is the new carrot and root crop bed and once again it is in good shape. So, I popped in a new row of beetroot and watered and fed the lot!
And the last bed has the last of the carrots and parsnips and a lingering bunch of fennel and nothing else. I watered and fed these as well and looked for weeds. I didn’t really find any there either. Then finally a whip around the paths with the hoe and I was done in no time at all. But as I promised myself yesterday to do something else so I can feel like I’m moving ahead, not just staying in control in the same spot.
I looked about and decided to give the goat a hand. We’d put her down in the garden – brave move but her stake is secure and everything else is tight. She had a job to do to clear the vegetation from the area on the other side of the path to get things ready for the next huge project that all going well will start next week.
After just under an hour I’d chopped down a mountain of lupin and revealed a mountain of boards and off cuts and other building debris that will also need clearing out. But the wasps came out and that was my sign to go in. It was still before lunch and I was just happy to have achieved something at all in my sleep deprived state and grateful the effort required wasn’t that great.
Come again soon – even when sleepy I can still Make May Count.
Sarah the Gardener : o)
I get excited when the garlic pops up too 😁
There seems to be more and more every day. I should know by next week if I have a full set or need to fill some holes with more cloves. : o)
I can sense your excitement and happiness about your garden and I can feel it,too! It’s such a joy to read you blog!
I really have been enjoying the time in the garden and also to do things properly rather than rush about. It brings a real sense of achievement. : o)
That is creepy for those wasps to be congregating like that. Is that normal for them? Are they nesting right there?
Are yucca a naturalized exotic in some regions there? When I was in school, we cooked their floral stalks as really big asparagus. (They weren’t very good.)
It would seem they are Asian Wasps and unless you can find the nest there is nothing you can do about it. But they seem to be non aggressive so can be worked around.
There are loads of yukkas -more in peoples gardens but don’t seem to be on the pest plant list at this point. : o)
I don’t care how aggressive they are or aren’t; I ain’t messing with wasps! I am glad they are not in my garden.
I remember than some species of yuccas had become invasive, but I do not remember where. It seems odd to me that they ‘could’ be invasive, because they rely on very specific moths for pollination. Each species of yucca has its own species of moth.