There was a glorious red sky in the morning and I tried to get a photo, but my camera was having a bad camera day and totally missed it. I’d decided to try to get the garden maps drawn so I could figure out where I was planting garlic in 3 weeks. I also got laundry started. I was determined to try to pull myself out of the trough of despond I’d been in for 3 weeks.
To do this, I start with the garden planner
because it will tell me where I’ve planted the same family of plant before in the last 3 years.
This is the 2021 plan for the Big garden that I never updated when I took out all the flowers. But the 2 green stripes in the middle are beans and I also planted 2 rows of collards on either side. There’s squashes and watermelons behind them.
If you find the 3 circles of horehound on the 2021 plan, you can see where I had to plant garlic on the 2022 plan. It was the only place I had this year. The red lines, of varying shades, indicate where an allium, in this case, has been planted in the last 3 years. The garlic is the blue/purple lines.
Fortunately (or not) I don’t need to plant so much, as it’s just me now. So I decided to cut back to 200 from 300 I did last year. I need some to cook with, some to sell, and plenty of quality bulbs to plant next year’s crop with.
I got the computer work done early and then started drawing 2022’s maps on graph paper. These go to the garden and withstand mud and water much better. Plus I can make changes as I plant as I draw in pencil.
I hadn’t been able to finish as I was pulled back and forth between the carpenters and the masons.
Late afternoon Tom came out and he decided to harvest a bunch of the vegs in the garden. The collards had been planted for his family, so he took 3 huge shopping bags full, and pulled up the plants. I collected a lot of tomatoes and peppers for them also. They got a watermelon too.
I pulled the weeds out of the carrots that had survived the woodchuck. I don’t think it’s in the garden any longer, as the carrots were 12” high. But it’s quite a moonscape out there, with dead plants, dirt mounds and debris piled around.
I have to harvest the last of the beans on Tuesday before it rains and that will more or less clear out the area for planting garlic. My helper will be here and we will attempt to process beans in the chaos of carpenters and masons.