Double Digging: or, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME

This is the area I need to Double-Dig. At the far end you see the pathetically small cube of a hole we managed to dig in 8 hours.

I was reading somewhere in my swirling vortex of perpetual reading (it is really rather like a tornado of printed words, except for IT LASTS FOREVER) about a group of Austinites who volunteer to spend their weekends DOUBLE-DIGGING gardens for people who cannot do it for themselves. This group is called THE GREEN CORN PROJECT.

When I started gardening, like a decade ago, in my CRAP SOIL urban CALICHE gravel-pit yard, I read up on Double Digging, and you know, it sounded really great. Like WOW, what a great way to make your garden be AWESOME! What it is is this: You dig all the soil out of a reasonable part of your garden (like say a 4 foot X 4 foot area), and you dig it rather deep (I forget, but like 2 feet deep or more). You pile the dirt on the ground.

THEN, you dig ANOTHER 4 X 4 foot area, and this time, you pile the dirt into the hole you already dug. Repeat until the whole garden has been double-dug, and then, in the last hole, you put the ORIGINAL dirt that you piled on the ground.

NOW, your garden will be super radically awesomely great and your plants will be able to grow deep roots, PLUS, it has all been “aerated” with oxygen which stimulates the soil organisms that feed your plantios.

Awesome, right?

A scientific image of DOUBLE-DIGGING instructions from the internet

Except, I dug about a six inch CUBE and I said to myself:  TOO. HARD.

And I lay my trowel aside and mopped my red-faced brow. (TROWEL? TROWEL you say? Yes. Because my soil is so hard and full of gravel and stones that a regular shovel, where you step on it, it doesn’t GO IN!!! So you kind of have to scrape the dirt with a trowel…sideways. Have I mentioned that my soil is SUB-PAR?)

So, what I did was, I went for the “Raised Bed” style of gardening, where I just pile like a metric TON of compost on the crappy ground and grow stuff in the compost. And it has worked well for me, mostly.

But last year and the year before, I just COULD NOT get anything (besides spinach) to grow in my two sunniest beds. And really, these beds should be my very BEST beds. Windy, well-drained, sunny….but instead all the plants I planted there were stunted and withered and did not produce. AT ALL.

So I thought: “Hey..if these VOLUNTEERS at the Green Corn Project are willing to spend their precious weekends double-digging for strangers, I can certainly do it for my own stupid self!”

I mean REALLY, right?

The Dirt that Was Removed. THIS IS A LOT OF DIRT!!

So, enlisting the help of my husband, I set aside a WHOLE DAY to double-dig these two beds. Except, I was going to do even BETTER than double digging. These beds are FULL of gravel, the soil is virtually solid gravel, with this greasy, horrible gray clay underneath. So, my plan was to SCREEN the dirt, get the gravel out, and return the soil sans gravel.

And you know what? We did it. Over a period of TWO DAYS, we dug, screened and double dug…..

A TWO FOOT BY TWO FOOT CUBE.

That soil was so made out of solid caliche that Dave had to get out the DIGGING BAR, a twenty pound rod of solid iron, and use it to break up the rock. We removed something like a dozen gigantic buckets of gravel.

The horrible greasy clay was the worst part: the consistency of Colby cheese, it had to be grated through the screen LABORIOUSLY in a mind-numbingly LENGTHLY process. OUR BACKS ACHED, our arms trembled.

Torrential rains were promised for the weekend, so, instead of continuing on and double digging the entire area (which apparently will take…..8X3X2….48 solid hours...6 straight 8 hour days!!!!!!) we had to shovel the screened soil back into the hole, so it wouldn’t wash away.

The Pathetic Hole. Actually, it is deeper than it looks....but it is still only about a THIRD of ONE bed.

(The Torrential Rains have come, too!  AND WHILE I AM ON THE SUBJECT:

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE LOCAL TV METEOROLOGISTS? On the news tonight, there they were, grinning away like GOONS, saying INSULTINGLY MINDLESS sentences like “Oh, too bad about the rain, maybe we can salvage a little of the weekend blah blah blah, rain= bad amirite?…” Dave and I stared at one another, aghast, and Dave said:

“HOW GODDAM SHORT ARE THEIR MEMORIES?”

I mean, seriously, we just came out of the Worst Drought In Recorded History!!  The Wort Drought in NON-Recorded history!!  According to TREE rings, the Worst Drought in, what, 6000 years?!?!?!!? SIX THOUSAND YEARS!!!

And these Blockheads, these Dunderheads, these…these……facile, empty-headed morons are COMPLAINING about RAIN?!?!?!

Honestly, do most American think FOOD comes out of the Replicator or something? We all eat FOOD! Food requires RAIN. Rain is much, much more than some kind of impediment to your goddam golf game.

(What I wouldn’t give for a TV meteorologist who isn’t some kind of COMPLETE KNOW-NOTHING.)

Where was I?

The Double-Digging shall continue, when the weather permits. I will keep you ABREAST of  DEVELOPMENTS! But the verdict still is: You Have Got to be Kidding Me, This Is the Hardest Thing In the World, I Need Like Thirty Volunteers To Help Me Do This.

THE gorgeous, gorgeous double-dug (portion of a) bed.

The Most Horrible Weeds: Before and After Weeding Photos

Gargantuan Weeds Choke the Dead Peach Tree

“Why, oh why, are the weeds so incredibly much more horrible this year?” I wondered to myself. “Am I just getting older? Do they just SEEM worse?”

OH YEAH. THE DRIP SYSTEM.

These weeds have been thriving on drip system water, and have put down Hellish roots and have TAKEN OVER.

The WORST area is by my dead Peach Tree and “Rosebush”. Well, underneath all of the EVIL Morning Glory, there still IS a rosebush, but I haven’t seen it since March. I really should do a post on EVIL Morning glory, because it really is an incredible plant, flower and FOE.

P*L*U*S, there is this very Unfortunate House in my neighborhood that CLEARLY was landscaped by a Yankee Transplant (Not that I have anything against them), and they just didn’t know what they were getting into, with the year-round growing season here and the EVIL Morning GLory. Oh my Lord. Their backyard (which is visible from the street), well, it looks like they just had a nervous breakdown and gave up, the EVIL Moring GLory has completely taken over and is growing like Kudzu all up into the trees, having already overgrown all the shrubs and flowers and lawn furniture and the water feature and the gardening shed. I really should get you a picture!

There is ANOTHER house in my neighborhood too, that had this problem in years past, and although they have cleared most of it out, it is still a pitched battle.

Every winter I pull up every vestige of EVIL Morning Glory on my property, and every spring it comes back and grows its Transatlantic cables throughout the entire yard and up under the eaves and INTO the HOUSE and UNDER the HOUSE and UP the Night Blooming Jasmine (which is probably my favorite plant in my whole yard), trying to kill it.

Behold The EVILLL!!!!

Why do I let it grow at all? Well, it is PART hubris; I think I can mange it (and I always fail). Also, the flowers are really, really, REALLY pretty. Not as pretty as GOOD Morning Glory, but close. Good Morning Glory is the annual kind, you have to plant it from seed every spring, and it canNOT take the heat. I think it is called “Heavenly Blue” (the variety) and it IS Heavenly.

EVIL Morning GLory is Perreniel: Plant it once and suffer forever. It L*O*V*ES the heat. The flowers tend closer to purple than the annual Morning Glory. Like a Stephen King novel plant, it will envelope you and grow all over you and strangle you as you sit in your lawn furniture. It will tear your house down if you let it.

So, In these weeding photos, you will see the “rosebush” in the background, with it’s mantle of EVIL Morning Glory. Let the WEDDING BEGIN!

You can SEE the “Rosebush” in the far Left. See the leaves? Evil Morning Glory Leaves.

Long View of Weedy Area with the Beginnings of Weeding in the upper right

Half Weeded!

A Closer Look at the Fine Weeding Job that included digging up Sweet Potato sized Four O' Clock Tubers

All Planted Up with Cabbages, Kale, and Lettuce

Time to Build Up my Readership….with More “Before and After” Weeding photos!

Pansies

Even though I am “over” the “flu, I am still dragging my ass around and sleeping inordinately and feeling queasy and energy-less. But everytime I get sick, I learn and relearn and RELEARN AND RELEARN this lesson: The World Did Not Come to An End When I Fell Behind In My Work/Chores.

And once you get to feeling better, the temptation is ENORMOUS to start stressing about Time Pressure even MORE than you did BEFORE you got sick, because NOW you are THREE WEEKS BEHIND !!!!!  ELEVENTY-ONE !!! But I swear to almighty GOD, THIS TIME I am going to LEARN the LESSON, that freaking out about time pressure and chores is Not Indictated. The thing to learn is to Relax and Do your Work and Enjoy It and Chill Out about time pressure and Try to Enjoy your life while you are Living It,  instead of feeling stressed all the time. Even when it comes to the Garden, what is the WORST thing that could happen if I didn’t get things planted in time? I would have to buy vegetables at the Farmer’s Market. Big Deal!

First thing after rising from my sofa, I weeded the beds I had already planted. And now…..(drum roll)……the before and after Weeding Photos!!

Broccoli Bed : BEFORE

Broccoli AFTER also MULCHED

Cabbage Bed : BEFORE

Cabbage Bed: AFTER also MULCHED!

The Cilantro Bed (or, as I really Should call it, the Nutgrass Bed) BEFORE!

The Cilantro Bed: AFTER

OMG Kathy! Did You Get Your Tiny Cabbages Planted before The Almost Certain Rain Tomorrow?!?!?!?

Enormous Grub Poops in my Hand.

Of course I did. But first, a gratuitous photo of a gigantic Grub crapping in my hand!

Then, let us join hands in prayerful expectation of RAIN, which there is an 80% chance of tomorrow, and even as I TYPE THIS, my radar shows a line of violent thunderstorms drifting in an Austinly direction! I may be wakening to the sound of thunder at 4 AM.

After a day like today, where I did a million things IN ADDITION to a Herculean Gardening Chore, I feel too tired to do much ‘splaining. Let us proceed DIRECTLY to the DOCUMENTATION:

Where is the Bed? I can't see it for all the weeds....oh, THERE it is, inside the barely visible brick outline

For Contrast, here you see on the left, a FINISHED BED, next to THE WEEDY BED that we will be working on today

Now, a photo of the bed, weeded:

I Have Weeded It

I found a few surviving beets and onions, that lived through the merciless heat and drought in the shade of the native weed-cover.

What a Fine White Onion, a SURVIVOR!

What a fine onion! I left him there to delight in the cooler temperatures and rain of Autumn

Now, a photo of the bed with three piles of screened compost:

This is just about the L*A*S*T of my homemade compost! Things are not breaking down very quickly in the DROUGHT

PLANTED!

All Planted! THis bed's new name shall be THE CABBAGE BED

Cauliflower in the back, then cabbages, then a row of “recovered” onions that I found, still alive, under the shade of the weeds, then Beets. Tomorrow, I will do a little post on BEETS, like my CARROTS: THE PLANTING post.

We Demand MORE Weeding Photos! Sez Rabble of Excited Fans

Primary Colors in the Garden

First, enjoy this lovely photo of the primary colors of the Oxblood Rain Lilies, Bronze Chrysanthemums, and Plumbago.

Now, these next beds promised to be a breeze, because the weeds weren’t too thick….until I remembered that in order to dig out the Bermuda Grass Roots, I would have to scrape off and RESERVE all the MULCH. Oy. So it became a multi-step process: 1) pull up dead plants 2) scrape off mulch 3) dig up weeds 4) turn over soil 5) fertilize 6) screen compost 7) spread compost. Are you sweating yet?

The "Carrot" Bed (I am naming these beds after what I planted in them last year)

The Carrot Bed" AFTER!!!!

In this bed, the Artichoke Bed, as I proceeded to pull up the very dead artichokes, guess what? THEY WEREN’T ALL DEAD! So I relocated them to a more congenial spot (this is a VERY hot bed in the summer, with the sun reflecting off the asbestos tile)

The Artichoke Bed: BEFORE!

The Artichoke Bed: AFTER!!!

I ran out of fertilizer, so I had to stop and go to the Garden Store. I go to The Natural Gardener, which is about 20 fucking miles away, damn them, but they are the BEST! It is a HUGE TRIP though, and in order to Personally Save the Earth I go as seldom as I can.

tiny artichoke leaves protrude from UNDEAD ROOT BALL!!

More Evidence of Life!

Don’t You Have Anymore Weeding Photos, You Elitist Chowhound?

The Trans-Atlantic Cables

Why Yes, YES I DO! First, I will treat you to a photograph of what I will call “The Chard Bed”, a small bed that lies near the driveway. I actually weeded these beds BEFORE (as in TEN MINUTES BEFORE) the rain, but I didn’t want to post them until I had the “AFTER” photos, which required Red Chrysanthemums. The Nurseries did not have Red Chrysanthemums IN STOCK before the Rain, an oversight that they have since rectified.

The Chard Bed: "BEFORE"

The Chard Bed: "AFTER"

Next, The Pomegranate Tree:

The Pomegranate Tree: BEFORE! (Note the many suckers)

The Pomegranate Tree: AFTER! (Note Red Chrysanthemums)

Let's See Those Red Chrysanthemums Some More!! (From the base of the Pomegranate Tree)

In which I Accomplish A Herculean Feat of Herculean Proportions that could only be Accomplished by Hercules

More "After" (with Rainlilys)

SO. Popping out of my house yesterday morning, I decided that since it had stopped raining and didn’t seem to even be THREATENING rain, I had better get back on the WEEDING HORSE because It had been like ten days so I was really getting behind “schedule” (you know, a bed a day and being done by the end of September.)

So because I CAN BE this way, I decided to tackle the HAIRIEST bed of all, the junglular (as in the word jungle), vine-strewn creepy awful FRONT BED, where I have a mountain of seedy oregano in addition to the Stephen King Morning Glories choking the very life out off everything and even climbing up into the rain gutters. Dave thought of the perfect name for them, he calls them “The Trans-Atlantic Cables” because of their tendency to wrap around themselves and grow in the straight line down the side of the house, like 20 vines all wrapped together and impossible to break (I told you it was Junglular!)

So, I weeded that bed. It took just about ALL DAY, and without further ado, here are the BEFORE and AFTER pictures:

BEFORE!

AFTER!

Rain Lilies

The Gorgeous Red Rain Lilies

Following in the wake of the FABULOUS, LIFE-GIVING RAIN, have come the Rain Lilies. Rain lilies are tender and fragile, grow overnight and last only a few days, but there is no better harbinger of Autumn (Here in Hundred-and-five-degrees Land, harbingers of cooler weather are likely to to cause fainting fits of joy).

Rain Lilies in the Bulb Bed

In my yard, the variety that appears are the RED ones; and Damn It, every year I FORGET that they are coming, and they always come out (they grow overnight) in the midst of thick weeds (because I haven’t weeded yet). Getting the weeds out without damaging the Rain Lilies is impossible, but letting them be choked with weeds is a travesty. The only solution is to try to weed around them.

Individual White Rain Lilies

Down the street the rain lilies are the WHITE ones. The white rain lilies don’t grow in clumps like the red ones; they are individual and tend to cover whole lawns.

Let’s Love them while they last!

Significant Rain in Central Texas !!!

POURING RAIN. Look against the dark trees: you can SEE it!

Remember my snarky and bitter comment about having to skip weeding because of RAIN? Followed by bitter bitter laughter? Well, I guess my bitter laughter is exactly what the RAIN GODS wanted to hear, because it has been RAINING. A LOT!

It is the G*R*E*A*T*E*S*T thing ever!

I don’t believe that people who live in normal areas of the world can even begin to apprehend what rain means to a Westerner. Even in good times, rain is never a nuisance or a given; it is always a Blessing of the Gods. Add to that the worst drought IN RECORDED HISTORY (meaning, there has not been a drought this bad in Central Texas since the beginning of recorded history, which includes analyzing tree rings, so we are talking about a thousand years. Worst drought in a Thousand years, people!)

water, ACTUALLY POOLING on the GROUND in my yard

We had the unheard of, the I have only experienced it a few times in my life experience of ALL NIGHT RAIN. That is to say, it rained in the evening, and the rain continued all night and into the morning. I know, I know, in Connecticut and West Virginia and Cape Cod that is an event so common as to be utterly unremarkable; in Texas, like I said, it has only happened a few times in my forty-odd year lifespan.

It was enough rain to actually make a difference,. The drought is not over now (I think for the last two years we are below average rainfall by thirty inches and that isn’t going to be made up in a day or even three), but we actually got enough rain for (I think!) the lake levels to GO UP a few feet, and for the ground soil to be dampened more than an inch at the top. (It would be interesting to know how deeply the soil became dampened; during the summer I had a neighbor tell me that in digging his yard, the soil was a little damp on top but absolute dust at two feet deep.)

More water pooling on the ground in the Downpour

North of here, at the Weather Hell that seems to be Jarrel, Texas, I heard they got SIXTEEN INCHES; I would guess the rainfall at my house to be about 6 inches, and it is on record that in Salado they got fourteen inches.

And it is not over yet: More rain is predicted!

What has happened is, a very large multi-state system is circling Austin, and spinning like a hurricane (but slowly), with us at the center, raining all the time. The clouds are very unusually low, it looks as though we are on a mountain top. It is funny: on Friday evening I phoned Dave and said : “Look at the sky! It looks like Katrina!”

Rain Clouds

But I had grown so bitter and tired of disappointment that I just figured that, since the ominous clouds were in the EAST, that they weren’t coming our way. (The prevailing winds here are always northwest to southeast). But because of the spinning nature of the storm, the clouds to the East circled around and did come.

So far, anyway, my prediction of a rainy autumn is coming true. BUT: I haven’t been able to WEED in a WEEK! In a way, I was glad, because HAD I managed to weed the whole thing prior to the storm (which I hadn’t even planned to do: the PLAN is, to have it weeded by the first of October!) then my topsoil would have washed away. As it is, the weeds held it in place.

Weeding to begin tomorrow; it is only a 20% chance of rain.

Thank God for those Pernicious Weeds! Holding the topsoil down

YAY RAIN!

Let the Weeding Begin!! September Gardening Series #2

Sad-Ass Sorrel plants, shrunken like Shrunken Heads to 1/40th their normal size by Heat and Drought

Because NO ONE CARES about my weeding progress or even my gardening except YOU, my DARLING READERS, I shall be documenting my painstakingly slow, arduous, sweaty progress from “Weed Kingdom” to “Ready for Planting”. I have, roughly, what might be described as 22 beds: some are HUGE (Hi Stella!) and some are tiny (the mailbox bed), but my general plan for September is to weed, fiddle with the drip system, turn the soil over with the shovel, and maybe even possibly add compost to ONE BED A DAY, and then, by the end of Septemeber, I ought to be READY FOR PLANTING!

Of course, nothing ever goes as planned, and life is uncertain, but that is the GENERAL PLAN. In order to get Ahead of Life’s curveballs, I plan, when possible, to do MORE than one bed a day. That way, when I absolutely can NOT do it for whatever reason (like if it is raining (HA HA HA HA HAH !!!) Oh, I slay myself) or Cramps, or getting thrown in jail) I won’t have Blown the Whole System.

Bed #1: BEFORE, pictured with weeding trowels in the foreground

Bed #1 AFTER!!!!

But in spite of my Bitter, bitter rain joke in the last paragraph, I am planning on a rainy rainy fall, because I believe it will be a rainy fall. I believe it so much that I am going to try to plant EARLY, rather than late, so that the tiny Plantios are somewhat established before the bottom drops out and the flooding begins. I feel it in my bones that planting early is going to be the only hope for a productive garden this fall/winter.

A Selection of Allums discovered to be lingering among the weeds of Bed #1

My Cats L*O*V*E the smell of onions, and want to transform them into playthings IMMEDIATELY

Bed #2: Weeds and 4 Thai Pepper Plants

AFTER! Bed #2, with only the Peppers Remaining

Bed #3, which I did all Extra! YAY