Lax on the posts. Mulch etc.

Man, have I been lax on my gardening posts!

Well, I did replant the corn after the damn rabbits ate them. I will post some photos of the garden this weekend.

I planted the winter squash - when, I can't exactly remember - did I even enter the date in my gardening log book, which I am also not keeping up on?

I guess I just got tired of trying to keep records and logs of everything in life. The garden is a record of itself. You can see the writing in the soil. If the seeds germinate, they are records of themselves.

When you plan in rows, you see the line of your labors.

So everything is coming up, except the French climbing beans that I planted near the corn. I hope they do, but they are competing with the weeds.

Weeds are a problem in this garden. I have started to address that by bringing in mulch. The mulch is provided for free by the city of Minneapolis, in great big piles on the West River Parkway. I stop on the way home from work and fill big plastic garbage pail liners. Then I spread the mulch (shredded and chipped trees) around the tomatoes, corn, and squash, and elsewhere. This will prevent the weeds from emerging or re-emerging. And it looks good. And it keeps the dirt from splashing onto the tomato leaves in the rain, which can supposedly give them blight of some kind.

The damn rabbit girdled one of my pepper plants - that is, it ate the "bark" around the base of the poor plant. Connie noticed that the plant had fallen over... I put it upright and, after Jarrod's suggestion, put moist soil around the gnawed base. It may survive with this fix, we'll see. I think I will try to take out the rabbit by sitting there one evening with my air gun.

The pumpkins are coming up nicely - three of them. Two are way ahead of the runt. I am going to keep them surrounded by chicken wire as long as possible, as I want a couple of pumpkins as a symbol of abundance in this age of collapse.

Photos this weekend!