Assessing the Raised Bed Soil

Now is the rainy season.  I have things I want to do outdoors, but I have to wait for drier days to do them.  Its pretty puddly out there.  The compost and soil is saturated.   All I can do today is make a To Do list.

I have turned my compost pile a few times.  Its done working and is ready to be sifted and used but I am trying to get it thawed out and fluffed a bit so it will dry enough to be sifted.  Once this compost is used on the beds, I will dump the tube full of our winter kitchen waste so I can get that working again and use it later in the summer.

 

One of my compost tubes is full of shredded leaves.  I will use the ones from the top to mulch containers, then probably mix a portion of it into the newer compost pile.

The raised beds need a little tidying up before planting.  This would be the time to test soil if I wanted to, but this year I am going to add a balanced organic fertilizer and top dress with compost.  I don't have any beds I am concerned about.  The bed above is clean and ready to plant and I will first be planting some butterhead lettuce under cover, then after the lettuce bolts I will plant the whole bed with a cover crop of buckwheat.  The birds have been sorting through the leaf mulch looking for insects.

These two beds (above and below) have old buckwheat stems from last fall.  I just chop and dropped it and since it was late in the season, the stems did not break down.  But they provided protection for the soil all winter.  Now I will lift the stems with a pitch fork and toss them into the new compost pile.

The beds below are covered with shredded cornstalks.  This is also slow to break down but I want to leave it where it is to suppress any weeds that may want to come up thru.  If I rake it it will make a mess, so I will just top dress with well sifted compost and plant my zinnia and cosmos seeds in that layer.

The strawberry plants are putting on growth and need their old leaves removed.

In fact, there are leaves to clean up in all of the corners.

Daffodils and Daylillies

We haven't set up the cold frame yet, but I have a couple of winter sowing projects already going.

The Sterlite tub contains a 1020 tray of lettuce mix and the milk jugs have Sahara Rudbeckia and Snapdragons.

The Snapdragons are up.  I see five teeny tiny plants

Indoors I have some early seedlings under lights

In the seed tray, bottom to top: Celosia, Coleus, Peppers,
tiny Mesclun mix and leftover butterhead.
In the cell pack: transplanted Tom Thumb mini Butterhead lettuce

The peppers are just getting their first true leaves and I will transplant those with the Celosia under a second light and when the lettuce gets set out I will have room to transplant the Coleus and start some tomatoes.

I'm ready for a warm, dry day to get going and in the next week or two I will be direct sowing peas, lettuce and carrots.