Still no rain. Drats. We're having a hard time keeping up with the watering. To make things worse, the winds are drying out everything.
Doug looked up into the orange tree and announced that it looks like we're going to be picking plenty of juicy oranges soon. Wonderful! They were nice and juicy last year. Yes, the tree looks loaded.
The banana grove really needs to be cleaned out. Allison and Michael will be tackling that job, whipping those trees into shape. There are a number if trees with bunches developing on them. But there are too many young suckers, so the grove needs thinning.
Speaking of looking up, we noticed that the avocado tree has fruits again. Not nearly as many as last year, but quite a few. Enough for all the volunteers to take as many as they want.
The grass is still a bugger, but the vinegar has taken its toll on it, many places the grass has yellowed and been stunted. So maybe we have a way to help slow it down so that we have the time to knock it out. Good.
The squash plant is getting mature squashes! Little spaghetti squashes. So far, so good.
The chickens are molting really bad. Lots of feathers everywhere, lots of half naked birds, and almost no eggs. Egg production has really dropped. We are going to increase the amount of meat we are feeding the birds in hopes of getting more eggs. We will see if it works.
The ducks are still laying on their eggs. According to our calculations,they should hatch sometime next week.
September 16th
We harvest the first spaghetti squashes. But also noticed that we are seeing some deformed ones on the vines. Possibly pickleworm or fruit fly?
We are pulling out some of the older plants that are not producing well. Ursa kale, eggplant, peppers, basil. Time to replace them.
Our newest project is a keyhole garden. Sue J read about them on the internet, so we are going to experiment with it. We built our first one and are just now filling it up with all sorts of organic material. It's like a giant lasagna compost pile. We've filled it, watered it in, and now need to let it settle.
September 23rd
Guess we're just in the building mood! Today we built our first table top garden. Got most of the pieces together and some if the bed filled. We hope to finish it next week and plant. It's lots of fun trying something new. In the corner we placed a milk jug with a wick for dribbling water into the bed. The wick is just a bit of rag punched through the bottom of the jug. We tried it out and it works!
The pipinolas have been going crazy, we harvested lots of them recently, and many more today. The cherry tomatoes are producing but have really slowed down. In fact everything has slowed. We are getting lots of drying wind and no rain. And the plants are showing the effects.
Sad news today........the baby ducks died. They were hatched yesterday afternoon. All looked well. But when we arrived this morning, they were all dead and spread around the pen. It looks like they died from hypothermia. We guess that Donna just didn't know how to snuggle them. Next time we plan to do something else. Not sure just yet what, but we will take steps to keep the ducklings from dying.
The keyhole garden got topped off again today. The filling is hot to the touch, so it's too soon to plant anything yet. But we've decided to grow assorted salad things. Doug wants to try one for tomatoes. Today he spent time cutting up pallets to make the next keyhole garden.
September 30th
New volunteer! Welcome Marla!
Table top update: filled today. And planted! Our first crop will be bok choy.
Keyhole update: refilled for the third time. So this should do it. We got it well watered and packed. So in a couple weeks as soon as it cools down, it will be ready to plant.
We're running a potato experiment. We planted two rows side by side. #1 row, the tubers were planted down into the soil about three inches. This is the way we have done it successfully in the past. As the plants grow, we will hill them then mulch them well. #2 row we just laid the tubers on the oil surface then covered them with 12 inches of grass mulch. The mulch will settle down to about 6 inches. This is a nice experiment. We're curious how it will turn out.
Because of the drought we are trying to get mulch everywhere.
The pineapple patch got well mulched today. The plants are doing well. Of course the earliest planted ones are much better than the rest. But all the plants survived.
The gourd harvest is in full swing. There are so many gourds that Sue J is being kept busy carving as fast as she can. She's doing two a day! Yikes!
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