Indiana Jones And The Garden Treasure

No!  Harrison Ford has not been has not been hanging around in my garden. He might enjoy flying over it in a small plane. Others seem to find that fun.  My garden is much too wild to enter without the benefit of a native guide.  August has been steamy and tropical here.  Everything has disappeared in the rampant growth.  I guess I am as close to a native guide as can be found.  First I must make sure I have the essentials to survive my trip into the underbrush.  Many dangers lurk there.  I dress in my white Solumbra clothes, carefully tuck my pants into my socks and apply insect repellent to my socks and hat.  I make sure I have water for the trip into the bush.  Protected from the heat of the sun and whatever insects I might encounter, I bravely begin going after the weeds that are going to seed first.

 After I have worked for some time I begin to see things I recognize.  Sometime in the not so distant past I may have seen a map of this area that tells me where some of the hidden treasure has been  planted  buried,  I can see signs of a stone path that  must lead somewhere.  I do not have a machete in my garden cart.  Besides the idea here is to find the buried treasure and restore the ancient stonework to its original condition. I am armed with my Cobrahead weeder.  I work carefully with my hook uprooting the tall grass. The sweet aroma of lemons let me know that  the lemon verbena was just to my right.  Mmmm...treasure!  Just a little farther on I found onions.  Whoever planted this treasure left stone markers with names like Red Cippolini, Copra, Red Wing and Walla Walla.  Wow! Organic onions at today's prices are really an treasure!!! I had to tie back a gigantic catnip plant to my left.  It is covered with seeds for the irresistible catnip that has always grown wild here.  I've made quite a few bucks stuffing catnip mice with that garden treasure.  I left a Nicotiana plant that was growing in the onion bed.  I'm curious to see exactly what kind it is, although they are all pretty much classed as poisonous.  I know Ed recognizes it so it's not that dangerous!  Organic dill seed is the last exotic treasure I will find on this expedition.  If you see the price per pound for this in the store, you will know it is  like finding the mother lode!

However, I can see the house in the distance and lunch is calling!  Perhaps tomorrow I will find my parsley or a beautiful tropical flower. I know I saw a beautiful white lily with red spots here somewhere.  Maybe I will go in search of the strawberry plants or the lemon grass or  ...

Onions And Muck

The pond muck  sloshed onto the soil turned in easily.  Three passes with the stone fork combined with some rain mixed the muck and the soil.  I was surprised to find bits of broken stone in the muck.  Colored an unusual blue, these stones stand out in the path.  The color may be the result of time buried in the muck or we may have found pieces of locally quarried bluestone.  Muck color is the more likely cause since we have never found any bluestone here.  We will watch to see if the color is permanent.  My fingers were temporarily muck stained when the onions were all planted.  All this playing in the muck did bring back feeling like a  boy playing at pond's edge.

An inverted wire cage provides a grid to quickly mark the planting holes.  We use 6 X 6 inch spacing to allow access for weeding.  The cages protect the young plants from deer foot prints.  When first planted, something pulls the plants from the ground.  We suspect nest building birds but have never seen them in action.  Cages solve both problems.

These Dixondale Farms onion plants work great for us.  Shipping when promised allowed us to prepare the bed and plant the day they were delivered.  With a little help from the weather, we should grow almost an entire year's supply of onions.

Generous numbers of plants formed each sales unit.  The overflow were planted in an adjacent bed.  Row spacing stayed at 6 inches while the distance between the plants dropped to four inches.  A comparison will be made at harvest to see if there is a down side to the closer spacing.  For now all of the onion plants are in the ground.

Working the soil this time of year frequently unearths overwintering hummingbird moth, Hemaris thysbe pupa.  Resenting disturbance, they whip their pointed end wildly about.  We carefully cover them with soil since we delight in finding the flying stage feeding on Monarda flowers.