It sounds like we're in for a very cold stretch of weather to end 2022.
The weather wasn't that great today...the temperature was in the mid-40s but the wind.... Oh my, was it COLD! Sustained winds of around 15 mph, with gusts up to 30 mph at times made for a really unpleasant day to be outside doing anything.
But I had it in my head that I needed to get something done outside before the cold weather gets here, so I bundled up and headed outside around 9:30 am.
First thing that had to be done was empty my little garden cart. It was full of the last of the composted cow manure from last winter. I ended up just carrying it into the garden one shovel-full at a time (because my rows are too close together for my cart to fit). I had enough to put a layer about 2" thick on about half of one row, along the south side of the cattle panel the cucumbers were on, and in a few spots at the end of that row. So now the compost is gone.
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| The last of the composted cow manure has been put out on the garden. |
Once the cart was empty, I used it to haul in two more cartloads of very fresh cow manure and added it to the compost bin, layering in some newspaper as my "browns." I know that bin doesn't have nearly the right ratio of greens to browns, but it just is what it is. The last time I checked, the temperature wasn't going up really at all, so I don't know if the pile just wasn't big enough or if it was too wet. I didn't even bother to check it today.
The last thing I worked on today was a Hügelkultur row that I have wanted to add to the west end of the garden. That part of the garden was just so dry this past summer that I didn't have luck growing anything there.
I've seen several YouTube videos that talk about how great this works, and if I want to have that row ready for summer, I needed to get started on it ASAP. (One of my favorites is "Hugelkultur in the Home Garden" from Growfully with Jenna!) So I brought in a couple of logs that were about 24" long and 8" around, plus one "chunk" of a log that was already starting to get soft, then dug a trench about 12" deep, 3' long and plopped the logs in. I filled in the gaps around them with sticks, topped that with some of the dried Sorghum Sudan grass I had cut last fall, put a layer of fresh cow manure over that, then finally covered the whole thing back with about 8" of the dirt. A light coating of partially rotted straw finished it off.
Now I only have about 30' more to go!
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| My first section of Hugelkulture bed in the west row of the garden. It looks very tiny for the amount of work it took to build it! |