End Of Winter Slideshow

1
End Of Winter Slideshow

• How things look around the Soil and Health
  Librarys market garden project
• Late July, 2009

2
July 31. It feels like the end of winter but
usually we dont perceive spring coming for
another few weeks. Some of our winter crops have
finished a few weeks earlier than usual, too.
Like the Brussels sprouts. Theres but a fewsmall
sprouts still forming in the very tops. In
front of the sprouts is our garlic crop, which
has so-far overwintered free of disease despite
the heavy rains recently, and is in fairly good
nick.

3
The Back Gate has been going so strongly all
winter that Annie has found herself a bit
overworked some days. It takes her three or four
hours every day simply to harvest, wash and pack
enough vegetables to fill both fridges, and
generally they get pretty much emptied every day,
except when the weather is really bad and folks
stay indoors. However, the income has far more
than covered the expenses of the venture,
including the land taxes on the vacant block (6
Garden), all our soil amendments and seeds,
hoses, irrigation systems, etc.
The lemon tree (rear left) has a few small fruits
on it this year. The incompleted wash station in
front of the tank is but one of my many
incompleted tasks around the place. Note the
salads coming up everywhere. In the days
preceding making this slideshow (August 1st now)
I have been cleaning up weedy patches in the
garden and planting beds to spinach and rocket
and a bit of lettuce. Maybe the lettuce seed will
germinate for sure the spinach and rocket seed
will. If these areas arent needed for our
kitchen or for sale, theyll make fine green
manure and help prepare the beds for the coming
crop. And I will be doing this sort of planting
all through the month of August, as places become
available.
4
The vacant lot behind our house, what we now call
the Number 6 Garden (for its address) is starting
to feel suburban. The house to the immediate east
of 6 is now occupied. The one behind Annies
behind in the bottom left picture now contains
two young children and two big hairy (outdoor
only) dogs in the back yard. At least they rarely
bark. Bottom pictures are the Swede crop
(rutabaga) and behind Annie (left) is the Swede
seed crop, carefully selected near-perfect roots
from the adjoining bed, transplanted a few weeks
ago.