The drudgery continues because....hobby

 Another warm day and will be closing up soon. It started overcast and I had hopes but noooo, it only made the humidity turn up.

I continue with some semblance of gardening because I have no other hobbies that will get me out of the house at this point. I call this a hobby because it's the truth, I have three other hobbies I am good at but no space to really do them. Well, knitting doesn't take up much room but the supplies do. Jewelry making is on hold indefinitely as everything but my essential tools and findings (travel kit) are in storage.  So the only other thing I'm good at, or so I thought, is gardening and that, is another near failure this year.

Soil was still damp but will try and get out tonight at dusk to water. The peppers are wilting but that is from heat not lack of water or roots being chewed.

Tried to get a picture of the flowers under the top leaves of the plant on the left. Not very successful. I shifted some of the bark over to the other beds and moved all three buckets to the back in front of the fence bed. Since I just took a shower I wasn't going to get too sweaty but did dig a little of the dirt to distribute it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's just looking like a freaking war zone I swear. You can see how different the color of the dirt is though. I pulled one of the logs out of a hole then just gave in and pulled them all out and dug the dirt  more. In a futile effort I took pieces of bark and jammed them in a makeshift palisade around the peppers. Only went in about two inches or so and likely won't stop anything but it was something.

The new cukes have more bark as a mulch around them after I took those pictures. The sun just bakes the soil so fast it doesn't give seeds much chance to stay cool and moist to germinate. So one out of four seeds is what I got and if those two plants survive the ravages of rodents I will be beyond happy. Keeping the soil cool and moist also encourages worms but in my dirt, that's not necessarily a good thing since what they leave behind is.... sandy clay silt. Nutritious but still... same stuff that's in the ground already.

I was thinking of what it would take to get the owner to make this area an actual raised bed garden that older people could actually use. Can't get any big machinery in there, if they tore everything out they would need to amend with a tiller. Old people can't bend over easily so has to be very much raised beds which means frames and more soil. Even if they only do the south wall to the back (leaving the lemon bush), digging out the jade plant (ha!) and have a corner bed with four 3 foot beds. Leave the fence area for pots and then maybe another raised bed between the kitchen window and the fence. Use the space under the fence for the hose and tools. They aren't going to put that much work into an area that so far only two people show any interest. Give me about $3000 and I can get it done. Not by me of course, that's just what it will cost in supplies and labor and that's an estimate. 

There are dozens if not hundreds of videos and plans and instructions on how to make a raised bed garden. Those are all based on either on the ground raised beds like the craptastic cheap version we have or all the way to the other end of the spectrum with top materials and soil. Hay bales... yay a home for rats and mice. Cinder block, if you have the man power and money which a lot of community gardens do have. There was one in Mira Mesa where I lived for a while that was run by a church, there's your money and they had an empty lot next to the parking lot that was perfect.

My friend pays into a garden plot at a church right around the corner from their apartment and I have helped her a few times to plant and amend it. Unfortunately when it was designed and made, they didn't completely kill the bermuda grass and almost all the beds are still riddled with it. So planning is key in making sure you have either a barrier or have cleared the soil completely.

I will be attempting a crude reconstruction of our garden area in Blender (3D graphic software I'm attempting to learn). Regular drawing doesn't cut it, nor does a drawing app that I have.

So instead of improving my soil as I should I will be making a plan of what it could be just because.