two hypotheses from Wednesday

No, not as in a classroom, but rather as in did the water container tip over by itself or did it get some help yesterday?

Well, the container is not solidly flat at the bottom and does have wheels, but Mr. Z had also just filled it up completely. On the other hand, why would any one want to water the paths (it missed the beds mostly)? It will be one of those unsolved mysteries...

The real deal rain barrel has been set up in the middle of the patch. We tied it to its heavy metal postings/legs just in case the wind decides to pick up...

Elzy and I planted the rest of the peppers, tomatoes, spinach, frissee lettuce. Even put in some leeks and celeriac. To finish off, the marigolds went in among the beds.

Then we called it a day.

another plan update

With the introduction of more plants, the beds are getting used up! Of course we can always plant over those where the seeds don't germinate -

updated bed layouts

Here we go again - revisions to the beds on what veggies are where :)

Another update on patch plan

To reiterate, the best laid plans of mice and ... More modifications to the plan.

Tagged!

Most of the beds got tagged this morning - here's what the patch looked like - an experimental agri station (got to avoid that "p-l-o-t" word...we've all been very good in avoidance).

Ran out of tags for the lettuces and some other ones - guess we can recall the factory worker of 1 to make some more as we do have surplus wire hangers.

Seeded some more lettuce, radish and beets, and more celeriac -realized we have a humongous bed - have left about half of that for Elzy's celeriac starts...

The plan will need to be updated again.

staking out the beds - photos

Here are some pics (courtesy of Kat) of the group measuring and staking the beds on Sunday May 11/09 with those handy wire hangers and some hemp string. Oh yes, also working the soil a bit... our Lilith Patch on the farm!

patch preparation

Wait! it was suppose to be a small one like those you find in the typical backyard... then dimensions of 30 ft x 25 ft was suggested. But a quick tally of those seed packages came up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 ft x 40 ft.

So I staked out an area of 25 ft x 60 ft (give or take a couple), collected those seed packages, and started to laboriously mark out the beds, spending 3 days figuring out what went where and when to sow/plant. Good thing I have Illustrator (as you'll see by the diagram) to lay it out and used Excel for number crunching.

Sunday May 10/09: It was off to the patch to actually set out the beds for real - yes, by the time we were done, the patch was 36ft x 68ft... It was those tomatoes that had been started indoors, about 100 of them of quite a few varietals!

We ran out of wire clothes hanger stakes (used with hemp string to outline the beds) so that was it for the day as by that time (about 2 hours later) we were feeling nippish. Hot chocolate, latte machiata and coffee with yummy pastries at the bakery cafe down the street went down very well; picked up a cream caramel cake for desert for Mother's day dinner too. Called it a day.

Here's the diagram of the patch as of May 12 (subject to changes of course).