And more rain starting early

 Rain on and off all day today. Woke around 6 am to pounding rain outside and it's been cloudy and sporadic all morning. Cleared enough just now so I ran down to check on things  but first, some comparisons of how far my garden has come in a year.

A year ago almost to the day I had two potatoes growing in the 'fence bed' that by June was devastated by gophers. They took the huge marigold first by then though I had pulled the potatoes and was considering growing something else.

This year, a well protected, elevated and healthy soil bed. These pictures were just after filling it on January 28. You can see where the soil level is at the first 'rib' of the walls. I didn't pack it down very much, always conscientious of compacted soil but that is from dealing with hard ground dirt. I didn't want to get too high on the walls for fear of it running off in the rain I knew was coming.

 

This was the other day. It has sunk at least 3 inches which I did not count on but too late now. If I had straw I would be putting that on the surface to help the soil stay moist. All said and done, should have taken the extra bag of soil.

I joined a Raised Bed Gardening group on FB to see what things people were growing and techniques and stuff. some people call having a single height frame on the ground just amending the soil a raised bed. Well if it's ground level, it's not technically 'raised' if I could add a 12" frame around my in ground beds and add soil, I would do it. Adding in more poultry wire of course on the bottom, because gophers.

I realized that with no job and having the opportunity to grow things, gardening is going to be my focus. I do other things on the computer but with summer coming up I want to do more things outside for sure. 

The north bed has been through a lot as well.

A year ago I had a tomato I had let grow over, radishes along the front and I  think those are sunflowers that I had to build a shade structure over due to the incredible sun. This year, rain, clouds and low temperatures befitting of Spring and not Summer.

No sunflower seeds left but that's okay, got radishes and carrots in the raised bed that I think will do much better than last year. Crossing fingers.

Now, as for today and what it looks like. Snails are still doing a number on the potatoes so I tossed out some orange peels from the compost bucket to hopefully lure them away.

Patches of blue sky before the next wave of rain comes through. Windy and cold of course and the ground is saturated. Which is a good thing and very welcome compared to a year ago that had scorching sun this time of year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They're growing great but being absolutely eaten up by the snails. Best I could do is orange peels from compost and some badly eaten leaves as bait. Might boil some eggs later and crush up the shells to sprinkle around.

The hard rain early this morning certainly splattered mud everywhere. No rain predicted but cloudy and eventually warming up to the low 70's in another week and a half. This is good, perfect spring weather, nice slow warming trend rather than the light switch to 80's.

This is why you keep a garden journal. If you think it wasn't like this last year, go back through your posts/ notes and check. The electronic age is a boon to record keeping especially for gardeners.