Hi everybody! It’s been an exciting month in the garden. I’m now on the board as the official Director of Digital Media & Communications, and I’m looking forward to the role.
This month we’re holding a two-part compost tea class. On October 10th we’ll build the compost tea maker, and on the 17th we’ll talk about the benefits of compost tea and how to apply it.
Getting the brewer running meant installing a solar panel with a battery bank first, and that took us a couple of tries. We first mounted the panel on some wood on the side of the shed, but it didn’t get enough sun to charge the bank. Last Saturday we moved it onto the shed roof, and the difference was huge: output jumped from 1 to 3 watts up to 60. If you’re thinking about a setup like this at home, pay close attention to where you put the panel.
October is also when we can start planting a lot of our cool season veggies, including brassicas like broccoli, cabbage, kale, and mustard, plus other leafy greens. It’s my favorite time of year to garden because our household eats tons of leafy greens.
Right now my bed is pretty bare. It has some beans in it, but they don’t look too happy, and I think the soil is too wet. My watering timer was still on the summer schedule of 15 minutes every day, and every time I checked, the soil was soaked. I’ve cut it back to every other day, and I’ll keep an eye on whether the beans perk up.
Once the compost tea is going, I’m curious to see what it does, especially combined with our Johnson-Su bioreactor. In the next couple of months the bioreactor should start producing very fungal-heavy compost, which will be great to use in the compost tea brewer. Together they should boost fungal activity in our soil, and the garden should benefit a lot from that.
How are everyone’s grafts from the mulberry class doing? My success rate is about 33%. There was extra rootstock and scions left over after the class, so I grafted two more on top of the one I did in class, and it looks like only one of the three has taken. They started strong. The scions were budding and I thought they had taken, but now the other two look dead.
I’m still having fun with grafting. I’ve since bought a grafting knife, and I found out the budding tape Chris gave us is expensive. First I ordered some cheap tape off Amazon, which was basically a skinny roll of Saran wrap. Then I ordered a paraffin-style tape from an orchid supply website. It’s much closer to the Buddy Tape Chris provided, at a fraction of the cost.
I’m excited for what this season brings, and I hope to see you all in the garden!