Mulch

I think I have touched on this topic before but, its always good to 'recover' this topic. Wednesday or Thursday morning the mower guy came by and mowed. The next morning. It must have been Wednesday that he mowed, the next morning Thursday I got up and raked most of the grass right across the street where he had mowed. I left some on the more bare patches for fertilizer. I raked up a loose wheel barrow load. Last year I put all the grass over where I did sunflowers last year up by the curb, this year I am doing wild flowers. Anyway, back to the subject. I got a wheel barrow load and mulched the things up here. The 2 square foot gardens, the pot with zucchini and potatoes, and my blackberry that I have in a pot.

The next morning, which would be yesterday, Friday morning I woke up at 7am. About 8 hours of sleep, but I was good to go. :) I was able to rake all the grass along the stretch from the woods to the road along Ikerd Dr. I raked it up and PACKED it into two wheel barrows. I say packed because it was 3-4 times the amount I got in one wheel barrow on Thursday morning. You really can pack alot! :) I did not have time yesterday to do anything with the mulch, so I just dumped the two loads at the front of the compost compound. It rained quite hard yesterday afternoon and gave everything a good drenching, including the hay. :( But, oh well. I could still spread it fairly easily.

For most of the day we were at the Homeschool Book Fair. I got to here a few conferences and got to look at a lot of good books. I finally found a book I wanted to buy, on herbs. The book weighs about 5lbs and is called The Encycolopedia of Herbs. It is quite good. I got it for under $30, and I saw it on Amazon when I got back for nearly $60. So, I got a good deal.

It was too dark to see anything when I got back, so I couldn't do anything with the hay. In the morning I got up and drove over to my friends house, to clean our hive frames with lye and paint out bee hives. I got lost an took an extra half hour, but not too bad. It was just as well though because he was still asleep when I got to his house. Turns out two of his kids threw up in the night. So, we got in his car and got something to eat and then we were going to go to his friends house to pick up a brew pot to do the lye in. Well, it was aluminum so we didn't get it. We got back to the house, and than went back out to Lowes. We picked up a 15gallon galvanized tub and brought it back. We got water heating on it (we had a fish fryer outside burner). So, we started soaking and scrubbing the frames.

We took a break for lunch and than finished doing it. We also painted the hives. Than we used the lye solution and poured it in the cracks on top of the drive way. I took a look at his fruit: plums, peaches, apples, grapes, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, kiwis, and I dug up some ginger he had growing.

I got home easily enough, unloaded the hives and frames and went down to the garden. I used up the rest of the hay I had gathered. I mulched the zucchini, parsnips, peppers, tomatoes, watermelons, asparagus, and other spots in the garden. I think of all the garden area I have I think 3/4s of it that I have planted is mulched. 2/3s of it has grass used for mulch and than I have a lot of it under leaves also. I am hoping to mulch the garden heavily this fall, anything that doesn't have anything growing on it.

But I hope that the garden areas that I don't have stuff growing through the winter I hope to have wheat and soybeans over wintering. I would also like to do some more garlic, and fava beans through the winter.

So, I guess thats all for now. I have to pack tonight for next week. I hope to do quite a bit of research in the free time I have next week. Well, I shall be going now. *puts on ring, and vanishes* :)


English Vintner