Friday, July 1, 2011

Planting beans, shelling peas, developing a new bed

     It was a lovely day on the north coast of California today, and I got to spend lots of time in the garden, but before I did, I spent about an hour shelling Legacy peas today.  Illijana then blanched them, and froze them, just as she did with the Cascadia sugar snap peas as well.
     I planted three varieties of bush beans today in the plot I had prepared yesterday.  Varieties were: Provider, an organic selection from The Cook's Garden purchased at Pierson's Garden Shop, Nash, a Territorial seed selection, and Roma II, a Romano bean also from Territorial.  I generally enjoy planting seeds in prepared beds.  Each seed gets placed where I want it, and gets individually pushed into the soil to the desired depth.  I end up feeling like each seed gets a little personal attention, and I like that.  I then label the patches of seeds, using recycled venetian blinds that have been cut up.  On each tag which I place at the corners of each patch to mark the planting area, I put the name of the seed variety, the date planted, and sometimes the seed company and year the seed was purchased.
     I covered some previously planted bean seed with Reemay today and noted that the bed had deer hoof prints in it.  Yuck.  We have been strategizing about stopping the deer from entering areas we don't want them to enter.  More on this topic in a later blog.
     I also fertilized and rototilled the bed from which I had removed the tree stump a few days ago (see the previous blog post 'Taking out a tree stump by hand.')  Fertilizer included chicken manure, wood ashes, alfalfa seed meal, greensand, blood meal, and bone meal.  I tilled the bed with my Mantis tiller, and then raked it smooth.  I will plant more peas there probably tomorrow.

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