Second Plantings

Weather was super great this weekend, so we spent some time in the garden, cleaning up a few beds and replanting some garlic in one. Garlic has a two-season cycle, so these should be ready to pick and eat next fall. They will hopefully sprout this fall, die back over the winter, and then come back in the spring.

Garlic is about as easy to grow as can be: Take the individual cloves, stick them in the ground about an inch deep. Cover with soil. Stand back. Wait. Water, Etc.

We also got some bare lawn patches over-seeded. We've had some trouble-spots on the terraces where the sprinklers have a hard time reaching and in one area, we've had a snow plow or school bus go over the curve and really make a mess of things. But this is a great time to sow grass: Temperatures are lower than in mid-summer, but the soil is still nice and warm. And usually there's dew at night to keep the seeds moist until they can sprout. You can usually count on some rain as well. Even so, we'll keep the sprinklers going on the area as long as possible.

Over Labor Day weekend, we planted some more lettuce. You can plant lettuce every 2 weeks over the summer and then have a continuous supply. We had started some lettuce indoors over the winter that was planted out in the spring and produced nicely - 5 or 6 heads, but we hadn't doen any successive plantings, so we've had to buy lettuce. This late planting is a bit of a long shot - will we get enough to harvest before the frost kills it all?

Another long shot was sowing some buckwheat in a couple harvested beds as green manure. They really should have been sown in July according to package directions. Next year we'll have to research a little more to find a more suitable winter cover that will be able to sprout if sown in September.