Cold breezy winter day

 Should have taken a picture of the whole garden for posterity but oh well. The weather is partly cloudy, cold breeze and only in the mid to high 50's so that's pretty nippy for daytime and dropping 20 degrees at night Yes it is getting into the mid to high 30's at night. Being in the sun is good until the breeze comes up and it is chillly! No rain expected until the end of the month but no watering is needed because of the cold temps.

This also means the soil is staying pretty darn cold so still no seeds sprouting or watering needed. I tossed the raised bed leaf layer with the shovel moving it around and turning it over as much as possible. 

And yes indeed, the gopher is tunneling under and through the compost. That hole had tunnels following the curve of the edging almost halfway around. I got the trowel and worked all that in really well, stuffing any onion cuttings I found into the hole and tunnels. Most definitely not going to be a planting spot unless I get some wire mesh under there. This was meant to make compost for putting in the other beds but it's just getting turned through the soil underneath now. It will be 'composted soil' for sure by summer.

It's an interesting experiment and satisfying in a small way to be able to take what would normally go into the trash or down the drain and put it in the soil. Even if the gophers might get most of it I hope to put in more than they eat. The worms are doing their work also but that, to me, is not good due to them turning organic matter into heavier clay type soil even though they are creating castings that improve soil, it isn't what my soil needs. It's used sometimes in potting soil to give it a bit more density which is okay but if you've already got dense, sandy clay soil, not good. 

I took as much as I could with my trowel to get some of the potting soil in the raised bed before I planted the potatoes in the north bed the other day. Not much but it's something right? It has perlite and compost and stuff so better than the soil they're growing in. Due to how dense the soil is I'm not really expecting  much in the way of god potatoes but I felt like I was doing something at least.

Oh something I was doing as I was turning the leaf layer was pulling out larger sticks and seed balls that I found from the sycamores and liquidamber. Hazards of getting lawn raking and parking lot piles of leaves. Not that they'll sprout anything anytime soon but they don't break down very quickly and would rather not have to fish them out later.

 Now, speaking of composting and a childhood memory. When I was little we had a house that had an east and west lawn. East lawn was Bermuda grass and gopher holes and had our septic tank there, west lawn was also Bermuda and gophers but had a slope so we didn't play there as much. Needless to say there was a lot of grass clippings those lawns would produce in the summer. Well, for whatever we were thinking at the time, we dug a hole about big enough for us to stand in up to our waist (not very deep being kids) and when my brother would mow the lawn he'd dump the grass clippings in there. Again with childhood logic, why we would put our bare feet in there is still unknown other than it was light and fluffy then we would dig our feet down and it was start to get warmer. That was magic to us. Wow! It's warm down there! So we would warm our feet in the composting grass clippings pit. 

The composting grass was creating heat, which is why you turn it frequently so the temperature doesn't get too hot and kill beneficial microbes.

Yeah. Well at least we weren't running behind a DDT truck getting sprayed.