In mid August, for the third time in the past nine years, I had good soil with plenty of compost added to the garden. Each time I have ordered 3 cubic yards (27 cubic feet per cubic yard = 81 cft3). For those of you that work in the metric measurements this is 2.3 m3. In other words, it fills up a small truck and is quite heavy. Some of this soil has always been used to build up the flower beds and the balance, usually about 2/3 (or about 54 cubic feet) for the garden. Now in order to move it to the garden it has be moved by wheel barrow about 33 meters, not much if it is done in one or two wheel barrow fulls, but quite a bit when one had to move it in multiple loads. I have noticed that over the years, this soil, which is identical to the soil ordered previously, has gotten considerably heavier each time or is that a result of the mover of the soil having gotten older, each time about 3 years older, so by a factor of 3 times x 3 years interval x 13 wheelbarrow loads (117 times older???????? or is this what is called faulty math or self-serving math????).
Anyway, after the soil was put in and tilled in with the existing soil, it was allowed to rest for a couple of weeks and then a fall garden was planted with winter squash, carrots, beets, red cabbage, cilantro, Italian parsley, fennel, spinach, onions, garlic and cauliflower.
It appears that the soil is way too acidic, in other words, too much compost, because many of the plant began to develop nice leaves that then just withered and turned brown. Much of the rest of the stuff that survived is not really growing, it seems to have been arrested in development and is just sitting there waiting for something to "kick" it off.
A few of the carrots seem to be growing, at a snails pace, as do some of the beets. Out of the 8 winter squash plants that survived 4 are developing fruit, one of which should be ready to harvest the end of this week. The rest of it just sitting there waiting for something.
Here are photos of this sad tale of home grown veggies.
 |
| A view of the mostly empty garden plot with the surviving carrots in the foreground. |
 |
| The beets, only half of the seeds developed to this point. |
 |
| One of the four surviving Winter Squash plants with blooms and fruit as seen below. |
 |
| This particular squash should be ready to harvest in a few days. |
 |
| Out of six fenned seeds only three survived and they look kind of anemic. |
 |
| The Italian parsley, which just sits there at this size, not doing anything, except looking like it really needs something, perhaps it needs to be transplanted to Italy so it will feel at home. Other years the parsley has grown almost to bush like proportions. |
