The wet weekend has slowed our fieldwork and planting plans, but it hasn’t slowed down the peas.

The peas have been up since last Wednesday. I took this photo yesterday (Monday), five days after I first noticed the first sprouts. I was hoping to plant the second round of peas yesterday, but the wet soil forced us to wait. I was happy to find the soil dry enough today to go ahead and plant the rest of the peas.

Friday was opening day for the P-Patch (our community garden). This is the first year opening day has been rained out. A number of the gardeners in the year-round plots have been working on their gardens for several weeks now, but the records bear out my impression that since mid-March the rains have been coming on each weekend. Claire at the Root Connection next door is reporting that sales of her vegetable starts are lagging. It seems that gardeners just haven’t gotten in the mood yet this year.

Meanwhile, the days keep slipping by. I was planning start planting the first seedlings out early this week, but the soil finally dried out enough today to start pulling the black plastic-covered raised beds for the Brassicas. The plants of the Brassica family include broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, Napa cabbage, and pak choi. These are all afflicted by clubroot, a fungal disease that attacks the roots and saps the strength of the plant. The fungus is very persistent in the soil. It is suggested that you not grow Brassicas in the same location for 7 years. I’m growing all the Brassicas in the same field so I can have a hope of keeping track of where we’ve planted them the seven-year cycle and have space available as we reach the end of the cycle. The big downside to planting all the Brassicas together is that we will then be creating a big magnet for Brassica-loving insect pests. We will be covering the plants with row cover for as long as possible. Row cover is a thin fabric that lets the rain and most of the sun through, but keeps those pesky bugs out. In addition, the air under the row cover is warmer, giving the plants a boost.

I did learn at a meeting that liming the soil reduces the effect of clubroot, so I decided to give liming a try.

This year we started limestone applications to all the fields in production in the current year (some fields will be fallow or covercropped). Lime additions have two effects. The most common use is to make the soil less acid (raise the pH). The availabilities of the various nutrients in the soil are all affected by the pH, but they all have different profiles. Soils that are slightly acid (above 6.3) to neutral pH (7.0) have the best balance of availability of all the nutrients.  According to the soil tests, our soil pH is in range, if at the low end, as is expected for our soils. The cation exchange capacity is reasonable and is improving as we increase the organic matter in the soil. I’m not going to try to explain cation exchange capacity right now except to say that it is a measure of the ability of the soil to hold and release nutrients. In theory if we increase the amount of calcium in the soil we will increase the availability of a number of other nutrients. In past years we have only added lime to the corn maze field, due to the heavy feeding of the corn. This year I decided to create the time and spend the money to add some lime to the other fields also. Rather than add the total calculated amount in the first year, we are adding some limestone and will monitor the effects on the soil tests and also on the plants. We'll probably spend several years to avoid overshooting and creating a more difficult problem.

To completely counter the clubroot fungus, we apparently need to raise the soil pH to 7.2. Although we did add extra lime to the Brassica field, I’m confident the pH won’t reach that high. I’m hoping for a partial effect.

Now that the beds are formed, we’ll be planting tomorrow.

The wet weather has also made us change our plans. We have postponed some painting. We need to paint the hayride wagon. After rebuilding the compost bins in the P-Patch, we decided we should paint them. We also have some touch-up painting on the sheds. Although wet soil did keep us a while from tilling or planting in the fields, we did manage to spread a lot of limestone and crab meal.

The greenhouse is filling up with lots more flats of tiny plants. We have had mixed results with the cuttings. The garden sage did the best – lots of newly rooted cuttings. We will probably get enough of the purple sage for our needs, but the French tarragon did very poorly. That’s ok, since our first plan for the tarragon was to divide the remaining clumps, which should be no problem. We’ll keep working on our cuttings technique. This week in addition to succession plantings of lettuce and spinach, John is seeding the first Brussels sprouts as well as most of our flowers. These include amaranths, celosias, China asters, dianthus, larkspur, zinnias, and, of course, sunflowers.

I first noticed a few of the apples blooming today.

It looks like the dry weather will hold, so there will be lots of bed forming and planting the rest of the week.

What’s playing today in the Jeep CD player?  Gaelic Storm – Special Reserve