You Betcha! Top Five Things I'm Doing WRONG in my Garden

After a week on a missions trip, a week on vacation, and facing two more weeks of camp and missions, I'm in garden avoidance land. I excitedly grilled the first patty pan. The heirloom pasters are starting to turn and everything is flush and full, but I didn't want weed, prune, thin, train, or any other necessary action.

I blame this on July. August will be worse. This is always where I fall of the gardening train. It's the reason I wanted (and got!) raised beds this year. 

Add the 90+ degree weather this week and all the work and packing required of me, and I was just about to let it go. I can't. My husband faithfully waters the beds every night. He's working harder than me and this wasn't his project in the first place. Admittedly, he's doing more of the grunt work right now.

But did you catch that? He's watering at night. Just when I was even avoiding my favorite "You Bet Your Garden" radio show from WHYY and Mike McGrath, I felt guilty, listened to a June archived podcast and came home in full gear. I have five things we need to change cause we are doing them wrong. All this work and we'd can change just a wee bit to make it better. Here goes my list:

1. We are watering for a bit every night.
Big No-NO. We need to do a deep water, a couple times a week, at about 5am. Since I have about seven spots where I'm invested with plants, that means two hours of watering daily. Two beds. Avoid stressing plants by bedding them down in moisture that can rot and mildew. Water longer but fewer times a week.

2. We haven't mulched.
No excuses. The 4H Fair is going on next door with all sorts of cast off poopy straw. Got a couple 9-year old boys and a wheel barrel. We'll be visiting a bit for a few nights, plus picking up more poo from the horse rescue ranch. Till we do this, we're just leaking water into the atmosphere.

3.  I haven't thinned.
I planted tons of  kohlrabi, carrots, and basil. I know the rules of thumb but I have this problem. I hate losing those plants. I know the end result of thinning is greater harvest. So, I've gone out and cut and pinched the basil, trimmed down the cilantro, and, this morning, I plucked out tons of weak kohlrabi. Now, for those carrots.

4. I hadn't weeded.
The grass, dandelions, clover, and even some purslane have sprung up around my tomato plants. I had watching chunks of dirt go with the root systems of those pesky plants. (Okay, I actually like the purslane. It's tasty in the salad. So, I left a bit of that in a free space. I just have to 'watch' it.)  The raised beds make me conscious of dirt as a commodity. They weren't quite full enough to my taste when I planted. But if the hubby has slung 32 cubit feet of dirt and manure into five beds, I'm not going to whine at a certain point. They were mostly full and we can top them off with manure throughout the year, right?

5. I hadn't brought in my 'cold' boxes.
I have a window box of arugula that I reseeded for round two. That died due to heat. But the older arugula went to seed. I needed to bring that into my sunny kitchen window and let the air conditioning cool it off. I love that arugula.

So this morning, I craigslisted food grade barrels, weeded, thinned, and planned for our two weeks away. I also talked to hubby about a new watering routine. Ah, it feels good to face the truth about my bad gardening habits. It's like a long run, in spite of a hot day, which is when I listen to my gardening show incidentally.