Well now that the plants sale is over, the Dessert Auction is imminent, and crops are being planted like crazy in the garden, what else is going on at DIGS? How nice of you to ask!! Click on the above picture to see that we now have a new special reserved section for propagating native plants, a new cucumber trellis, and mysterious white fabric floating row covers over certain seeded crops. The white Remay cloth or row-cover-polyester is keeping out bugs that destroy carrots/turnip/radish. So after watering underneathe you want make sure it's sealed down with rocks and corner-clothes-pegs afterward so the bugs cannot enter and take up residence while the plants are young.
When you first enter the front gate, if you turn to the left you'll see the tallest wooden beds 15 and 17 which are currently part of our Coleman Project (growing more veg in less space throughout the cold seasons too).
Here we've been having good success so far featuring "Cut and Come Again" Mesclun (mixed seed packet of small sized lettuce/kale/arugula that is meant to harvest as "baby greens"), a mixture of full-sized spinach, lettuce and parsley, and transplants from Jim's garden of leeks and scallions to fill in spaces not taken up with carrot and turnip. The Little Diggers Sunday 10am program is also using Remay cloth to cover radishes, and soon, carrots in the littlediggers L-shaped bed near the center of the garden front.
Elsewhere, peas and broadbeans are almost ready to harvest, and the asparagus is finishing. Note that asparagus stems that were simply broken off above the soil-level ended up dead and withered (see photo above top left), whereas if broken/cut below ground asparagus stems stay alive. In starch-land, the large row potatoes are flowering, and the shorter potato towers by the gate are also doing well.
Green beans have had germination problems (bush beans will likely need to be resown but that's better for succession planting if done weeks apart anyway) and the squash transplants are struggling in the cold weather. Not pictured, but a great new feature, the new raspberry cane pattern of semi-circular bending to produce three times more fruit and at a lower height has been a huge success. More photos of that to follow as the season progresses. Exciting stuff!!
Best, Jen
