Amy Pollien » mulch http://amy.pollien.com Art and bees. Bees and art. Sun, 05 Sep 2010 01:34:27 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Weather post http://amy.pollien.com/2009/05/29/weather-post-3/ http://amy.pollien.com/2009/05/29/weather-post-3/#comments Fri, 29 May 2009 23:35:50 +0000 admin http://amy.pollien.com/?p=234 It’s been raining for three days. The forecast is for partial clearing tomorrow, and then rain through Wednesday. This never happens here. I remember years when we had our last rain as April showers and then no relief at all until early September, when the land began to cool and the warmer ocean water made for thunderstorms each afternoon. I took pictures while it poured today, shielding the camera under my coat, because the garden is much more Connecticut than Maine right now. It’s as if I had topsoil! Lovely, loamy stuff that held water and the finest root hairs and nurtured earthworms. I guess if it rains every day even this meagre, stony ground will make heaps of daylilies, dense banks of strawberry plants and tender redleaf. Maybe this is what would happen if I were the type of person who watered her garden, maybe.

Looking south

Looking south

The picture below is the random assortment of plants growing in the warm permaculture of the dooryard, occasionally splashed with dishwater in true cottage garden fashion are: woad, lupine, columbine, lady’s mantle, autumn blooming clematis and the ever-present forget-me-nots.

dooryard-late-may

The bean bunker is doing well, too. Those light spots are all the lovely brown eggshells in the top layer of compost.

bean-bunker-late-may

]]> http://amy.pollien.com/2009/05/29/weather-post-3/feed/ 0 Potato Bunker http://amy.pollien.com/2009/05/02/potato-bunker/ http://amy.pollien.com/2009/05/02/potato-bunker/#comments Sun, 03 May 2009 02:38:09 +0000 admin http://amy.pollien.com/?p=177 Before. . .

Before. . .

Today I planted potatoes. We’re on the downside of the moon with a waxing gibbous (as much as I hate to subscribe to that sort of thing, I also like to cover all the bases) and the garden was still bug-free (at least until 7:30 this evening, when they arrived in force). I filled the bed with a mix of peat, seafood compost, seaweed and gravel, then pushed the seed potatoes in to a depth of about 2″. Then I covered the bed with mulch hay to a depth of 3′ and that’s it. Around the end of August I can rummage around in the hay and gather enough new potatoes for supper without killing the plants.

I’ll need to pile more hay on the bed over the course of the summer. The plants will grow through the pile and displace it, so I’ll add more hay to keep sunlight off the potatoes. It will also keep enough moisture in so that it shouldn’t need watering, and will keep the weeds down. Mulch hay is great stuff and cheap this time of year. Here’s the potato bunker wearing its hay-hat. I got a deal on my last four bales at the Feed and Seed for drawing a rat, but that’s another story.

All-Blue, Sangre and Butterball potatoes

All-Blue, Sangre and Butterball potatoes

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