A Wet Monday

Today we began by planting a second row of ginger. The sprouting ginger is a weird alien looking thing, and we placed 72 of these plants in this second row under the shelter of the plastic tarp hoop house. Our second order of business for the morning was ensuring that the hoop house wasn't destroyed by the wind. We re-zip tied all the pieces of plastic to the hoops and attempted to readjust the roof every time it was blown off-kilter by the stormy gusts. We ended the morning sifting through compost to get fine soil in which we will soon plant kale, spinach, and other leafy greens. Sifting through dirt when it is sunny outside takes a while. When it is raining and everything is wet and clumping together, it takes far longer.

Still we managed to entertain ourselves, talking about movies and music, sinking in the mud. I also learned that really awesome compost takes about 3 years to create and must be turned over a few times. Savery explained that the manure/plant mixture we've been creating over the past few weeks, could be turned, and it would be decomposed in about 60 days. It continues to break down over time. The compost we were working with today was about 2 years old. Some of it was very fine and broken down, but there were still lots of leaf and nut pieces that we had to sift through.

In the afternoon the sun finally came out! Huzzah! We continued to work on securing the hoop house, by creating a crisscross network of hemp string and stakes in the ground to keep the plastic top from escaping. Then like usual, we weeded and weeded and weeded.