Soil Health

I took a last minute trip this past week to North Carolina and was fortunate enough to have a coworker stay at my home and keep an eye on the garden.  I am quite sure I would not have been capable of leaving the state without that bit of insurance, so I am super grateful for a great new friend.  

And the good news is - while I was gone, the garden did some serious growing.  Sorry I don't have any pictures to share, but it's well past night fall here.  So - tomorrow perhaps! 

I harvested probably 4 lbs. of arugula two days ago and I have had arugula like 18 ways.  Maybe that it is a bit of a dramatic estimate, but I have had two dramatically different arugula salads (both which included blue cheese, duh), a couple arugula and hummus sandwiches and some wilted arugula and pasta.  I think the pasta dish was by far my favorite!  I have also harvested a great deal of lettuce and I have to say that I am once again falling in love with lettuce.  I think last season I became so accustomed to having fresh cut greens, that I really lost that lovin feeling for lettuce, but it's making a come back and that is a good thing, as I have another 20 heads of lettuce that I have to harvest to make room for some additional food bank plantings.  The food bank can not live off of lettuce this season!

I wanted to talk a bit about soil health because I am so shocked at how much the quality of my soil has increased.  Just a couple of weeks ago I was feeling really discouraged about the soil in the garden plot beside my home.  This was the plot that I dug out early in the spring, removing the sod and turning in compost.  As soon as the spring temperatures began to increase, the soil dried out and proved to be quite poor.  I asked some other gardeners, whose experience I have much faith in, and they suggested that I top feed the plot with compost.  I did it once with 4 cubic feet and a week later felt like it needed more, so I added an additional 4 cubic feet.  I then watered pretty heavily and covered the entire bed with straw.  Following practical advice, I still felt I had simply wasted my time and money on this entire plot.  

Until today...

Today I spent some time in this plot pulling weeds, harvesting more lettuce and radishes and I could finally see some serious improvement in the soil quality.  What was once dry and almost rock like, is moist loose soil.  I am certain the rain over the last week has something to do with this, but I know the effort in top composting and protecting the top layer with the straw was an extremely beneficial move.  

I am so happy with this plot - greens are growing, cilantro is almost ready for harvest and I will spend some time trellising my sun gold cherry tomatoes tomorrow.  I will also spend some time across the street expanding the trellis for my pea plants - apparently they are a much taller variety then the one's we grew last year.  Tonight I noticed that they were not only flopping over the existing trellis, but are actually on the verge of snapping!  

Hey give peas a chance!