Wow, long time no post!

 Last post was on Sept 12 and it's been 5 days? I thought I posted a few days ago...I guess 'a few' is five? Not much happening so that's okay. I have been checking on things but nothing has been growing or moving so not much to report. I did water though yesterday and got some pictures. The weather has cooled considerably after the stormy weather 'almost' long pants temperatures but not quite.

 Cute little butt crack pepper there, is my pepper twerking at me? The rest of the flowers seem to be forming fruit as well so it seems that late spring/early fall is a better time to grow even the summer type fruit. Zucchini was late and so were the peas and that lone bean plant... might have to give it some fertilizer and see what happens. I only watered around it and not the whole bed because what's the point? I know that it needs to stay moist to keep the biomes going but not even sure what I might grow in that now and might even try and plant some bulbs. 

A year ago almost exactly I was harvesting a few zucchini and some tomatoes,  in October I had some bean plants come up. So it's just really not an exact thing in my garden for what to grow at certain times.

I really miss seeing the changes of flowers at the nursery every season. Pansy, Stock and Snapdragons in spring then for summer it was Dahlias, Sweet Alyssum, daisies, Angelonia (Summer Snapdragon but not related), Begonias.... tomatoes, peppers, herbs, squashes and all that for veggies then fall rolls around and the veggies change out for cole crops, leafy things like lettuces... sigh.

Then the roses, bare root veggies, trees and vines for winter. I had so many dreams of having my own small yard to plant the things I love. To be able to grow something that gives you something in return whether it's fruit or flowers is one of the many joys of gardening. It's not all smiling and walking slowly through the garden with a basket for harvesting as we know. There's weeding and watering and digging, what pest is that and how do I not fail this year.

I want to write about the type of raised bed I am going to tray to do following the 'hugelkultur' method. I double checked and discovered that the Sweetgum (aka Liquidamber) that I have is perfect for using in the bottom of the bed. It's considered a hardwood which means it will not decompose quickly. As my pictures of the logs have shown, they haven't broken down at all and I don't know how long they've been there. The only thing I'm concerned about is termites but since the walls of my bed are metal, it's not that concerning. My only issue is gathering leaves and grass clippings to go on top of those. Lord knows I'll have plenty of leaves pretty soon and I might just start to gather them up now and put them in bags. Then there's the mulch I have.

What's interesting is I've been recommending this sort of thing for deep pots for years. Well not specifically but more as a filler so you don't use the entire pot for soil. Same thing with raised beds, I had no clue it was an actual planting practice. But this also saves a lot of money on actual soil I will need. I was going to need about eight bags of 2 cf soil, with this method I only need three maybe two. The graphic I found said 45% is wood/logs that's almost half with 5% cardboard under that so that's half of the depth right there. Wow. 12-15 inches of filler right there with 20% layer of  smaller leaves/twigs/mulch  on top of that then the remainder is soil.

Might be able to pull this off after all. As long as I can get it built.