Getting There

This morning I got very close to finishing the prep work on the first sections of my planting bed of greens.  I have seedlings of pac choy and kale ready to go into the bed and a small heap of mulch ready too.  All I have to do now is finish amending the last of the reserved soil from the bed with compost and rock powder, dump it into the bed, and rake it level.

I'm really anxious to get some pac choy going in the bed.  My container crops are winding down now...the okra plants are dying back, the peppers aren't producing as much, and I'm reluctant to eat any more eggplant.  It's looking more and more like I'm too sensitive to nightshade toxin to be eating eggplant and nightshade potatoes. Both eggplant and "white" potatoes contain solanine and chaconine. Those are glycotoxins that can cause a variety of problems for sensitive individuals.

I abstained from nightshades for two weeks, then went back to eating peppers and eggplant almost every evening to see if they would bother me.  Apparently they did, I'm currently dealing with several different problems which I think are being caused by the eggplant.  Food sensitivities can be hard to pin down with certainty...the effects may take a few days to show up sometimes.

So I thought I would focus on the South Garden for a while.  I also have other greens coming along in the little plastic pots...tatsoi, chard, Red Russian kale, etc.  Looks like I'm going to be mixing a lot of soil in that wheelbarrow for a while.

I use the intensive method of bed preparation...that involves removal of topsoil and thorough mixing with compost and rock powder before returning it.  I've had really good results with this method...just digging in some compost with a shovel led to repeated crop failures.  My soil is very alkaline and sandy, this encourages plant-parasitic nematodes and the roots have trouble accessing nutrients in alkaline sand.  Mixing in compost seems to solve these problems, but it takes a LOT of compost to do it.  As soil humus builds up, maybe I won't need quite so much of the stuff.

As always, we'll see how things go.

A Little Cooler

At least for a while, the super-hot afternoons have gone away. So I'm thinking of my cool-season crops.  Those are best grown in the ground, where the soil is cooler.  They tend to wilt badly in the black containers, where the soil gets very warm.  That's assuming you mulch, which is a necessity in hot climates.

So I've been grubbing out weeds and roots, and getting ready to plant some kale and pac choy at the very least...eventually I hope, a lot more than that.

I have a fine big stand of Crotalaria spectabilis, a plant from India that's used to purge the soil of root-knot nematodes.  It's taller than I am...I should take some pics.  I'll leave it grow until I get the first two planting beds ready, then the plants will have to go.  I always save seeds of that plant, which just showed up in my garden without being invited.

I also have ground cherries out there, but I'm too sensitive to nightshades to eat them.  They do taste delicious, sort of a cross between peach and pineapple.  For the time being, I'm giving up eating all the nightshades...potato, eggplant, tomato, pepper.  The ground cherries are in that same family, the Solanaceae.  I have Physalis longifolia in my garden...which also showed up without an invitation...so tasty and so not on my menu.

The Malpighia did well this year, I had lots of fruit for a change.  It's just in a pot, I never did build up a mound of soil to plant it on.  It's too wet here for most fruit trees.  They are one of my favorite things to eat, and they have far more vitamin C than citrus fruit. Nurserymen sell them as Barbados Cherry or Acerola Cherry.

I know, photos...I'll get to that soon.  Right now I'm moving soil around, pulling out weeds and tree roots, and mixing compost with the soil.  It keeps me busy.