Compost and critters and cuttings oh my!

 Partly cloudy so not entirely sunny, still good weather to be outside. I grabbed my gloves then decided to try the seed tape idea for some Danvers Long carrots. Did two seed tapes with six seeds on each.

When I was walking Rocky he decided he wanted to see if there were lizards and sure enough, one was on the wall I took video but not a still picture. When I went to the garden I did startle another lizard and managed to get a picture of it on the log pile before it skittered off to hide.

The aloe has more bloom stalks as well so that will be visited by hummingbirds and possibly bees when it opens. Not going to repeat the spiel about birds and bees and flowers and trees.

I guess they wanted you to use single ply because this was having to separate as I worked it. Still had to use tweezers to put one seed on each dot of flour paste because I was dropping more than needed with my fingers. Not going to bother with this particular 'hack' again because it's fiddly and time consuming, I'll stick with row seeding and thinning.

 

I could have made them longer and spaced them wider but was going to keep the radishes where they were. Then figured, what the heck and pulled the three of them. Two were okay size and the third I actually replanted where the larger one had been.

 

Even the two were kind of small but you pick them when you see them or they disappear or get too old to eat. One had some odd scratches on it, not sure if that's snail, bugs or worms. Critters are definitely making their way into the raised bed though.

 I brought a bag down to dump out the compost on and ended up putting it in the bag instead. It was a kitchen bag so not very strong, tore two holes in it as I was dumping it back into the bucket. Way wet at the bottom, so I put two small logs down and plopped it on there. Hope that helps it drain better. 

Very too much wet at the bottom, will try and toss that compost once a week but from what I understand we may have more rain coming soon so might have to put a bag on it again. I did water a bit after crunching the compost around a bit and mixing it up. I looked back at the bed and saw a black beetle trying to climb out of the bed. I was like, where the heck did you come from? More critters coming up from the ground apparently, although this one could likely fly in. At first I thought it was a Darkling beetle which are the ones that lift their back end and spray stinky stuff as a defense. I then realized, it wasn't when I tried to pick it up.

 

 

It's just a Common Black Ground Beetle which are another part of the clean up crew, they eat compost and wood so I dropped it into the compost bucket which took a bit for it to finally find some leaves to climb under. Got video of that as well as it making the circuit around the raised bed.

 So carrots are planted, the lettuce looks like it's almost ready for another snipping and I actually used some of the onion tops tonight! I was fixing a couple of small baked potatoes and thought, do I have green onions left in the fridge? I did but they were too far gone...wait..I have onions in the garden! I didn't pull them (the ones I planted from the rooted cuttings) but took the scissors down and snipped one of the leaves on an onion and the garlic!

 

Thought I took a picture of the clippings but oh well. Fresh green onion and garlic top on my potato! Maybe I'll have those radishes and some lettuce in a salad tomorrow!