Catchin' Up

Haven't posted much here, but I haven't been loafing.  I got one of the planting beds in the South Garden completely finished today and took a pic to show off...

The plants in the foreground where the soil looks darker were all set out this morning.  The ones further back have been growing and supplying me with greens for weeks.

I think my health has improved a bit since I've been nibbling and cooking all these greens.  It's a wide variety of plants...radish greens, pak choi, tat soi, regular kale, Red Russian Kale, mustard greens, bunching onion.  I also have a few carrot plants here and there in the bed for soup.  Here's another shot of the plants that have been growing for a while...

Those smaller plants near the path on the right aren't weeds, they're volunteers...a pepper plant and some purslane.  I use the purlsane in stir fries and soups.  I never have to plant it, it just comes up everywhere on its own.

I'm really pleased with the way the greens have come along. They struggled at first, until I started liquid feeding regularly with an organic blend I make.  My soil is very alkaline in pH, so the roots have a hard time absorbing elements like nitrogen and potash.  The liquid feeding seems to alleviate that problem.  I foliar feed about every other day with a sprinkler can.

It's a lot of work to set up the beds the way I do it, but the results have been so much better than my older methods that I'm sold completely on a highly intensive approach. Every bit of that soil in the bed has been blended with compost and rock powder in a wheelbarrow so it's uniformly mixed with no pockets of barren sand for parasitic nematodes to thrive in.  Whether it's the pH or the nematodes I don't know.  It just works.  I use at least a one to two ratio of compost to soil.

Here are more pics around the garden areas...

 Sweet potatoes in 57 cm pots

 White Beauty eggplant in 57 cm pot

 Pak Choi Shanghai ready for the soup pot

 Radish Sasai

Swiss Chard Ruby Red

I decided to go right ahead with the next planting bed, doing it in sections and planting bean seeds as I go along.  When you find something that works, go with it.  As Yogi Berra famously said..."When you come to a fork in the road, take it."