Too many plants, too little time

I realize that it takes a real commitment of time and energy to give the garden all it needs. Time and energy that seem to be used in many different arenas, only one of which is the garden. So, things in the garden get neglected and delayed.

Yesterday I found time to give all of them - seedlings and plants and fruit trees - a dose of Maxicrop, a kelp based food. The seedlings need something like that after they get their first true leaves, which they have had for a week or two now. And they should get it now every week. So should all the garden.

The seedlings will need to be planted into bigger containers this week. Our success rate:

tomatoes: all but two of the 42 starts germinated and are growing
onions: 11 of the 30 germinated
winter squash: all but two of the 16 starts are doing well. Two Guatemalan Blues did not sprout.

We're still working on preparing beds. All the cover crop is out of the ground and ground up into fine matter. We're using some of it as mulch on the planted beds. It really helps to retain the moisture and cut down on the watering. We're preparing our first batch of worm tea from a contraption we got at last weekend's Sierra Green Days. We'll spread it on all the ready-for-planting beds. They claim that a light application of this is the equivalent of two or three inches of compost. That would be lovely! Save a lot of shoveling!!

This afternoon the intention is to get some more seeds started - another tray of lettuces for the next succession and some melons.

One of the baby peach trees we planted (hmm, last year? the year before?) just up and died. The leaves came in really small and one day just wilted and dried up over the whole tree. Sudden infant peach tree death.

Okay, time to get to work, but here is the promised photo of the cabbage that was lunch recently!