Fall garden

This weekend I ripped up the north bed and replanted fall crops. The blight had just gotten too bad and I had to make that decision to get rid of the diseased plants and get some fall lettuces going.

First off, the night before I soaked my seeds to get them germinating. I put the contents of each seed packet in a separate red solo cup and covered the seeds with water. After at least 12 hours I strained the seeds out of each cup and put them on paper towels. This helped me separate the seeds so I didn't plant them in clusters

and was able to broadcast them all over the plot.

I sectioned off the bed into four plots using cardboard pieces from canning jar boxes. I was even able to use them as labels. I did arugula, spinach, cilantro and collard greens. For these plots I just kind of threw the seeds around randomly and pushed them into the dirt. I might have to thin some of the greens, but maybe not. Last spring my mesclun mix grew close together but it worked just fine.

For the cilantro, I used seeds from our spring cilantro crop. I let it bolt, then cut the plants when they had seeded, then dried them inside. Hopefully, the seeds will be ready and actually grow something. If not, I guess we will just plant something else. Ryan and I figured we may as well try since we have a lot of coriander, more than we know what to do with anyway.

That night, after planting, a huge thunderstorm came. There was even a flood warning, but I don't think we got that much rain, maybe 2 and 1/2 inches, tops. I'm hoping my seeds weren't washed away or ruined. I think it'll be okay, but just got to wait and see.

Ryan put down some of our compost that was ready, before we planted. We had some alfalfa mulch left, too so we hand-tilled that in with the compost. The compost was kind of wet but I think it'll be ok. I only tilled down about an inch, I didn't want to go much further because we were planting crops that need to be planted shallow. And why work harder if I don't have to?

In the south bed we planted butter lettuce and bok choy. For those we planted rows since they'll grow better that way because they are more like heads of lettuce. Also, there weren't as many seeds in those packets, and the seeds were bigger than the others so it was easier to plant them in rows.

Hopefully our fall crops will do better than our summer tomatoes and peppers. Now, we just wait.