Time elapsed, and notes on mulch

So, since my last post about the first tomato, we've had a few more tomatoes ripen and find themselves in salads, the carrots have been thinned sufficiently that those which I pull these days are edible sized, instead of comically tiny. The lettuces are doing quite well, especially the arugula and I've had a good time thinning those rows, because the thinnings taste awesome. Even at the tiny stages when most of the sprouts look the same, radishes look like lettuces, look like turnips look like mustard greens, they taste entirely different. It's really interesting. Between beet greens, lettuce and mustard thinnings, pea shoots, carrots, tomatoes and basil, we've had a couple of really decent meals out of this garden. Poorly drained, infertile, rocky soil and all.

Every time I get to bring stuff in, wash it off and eat it, it makes me happy. Stupid happy. Still, my dirt sucks; It's horrible, and I can tell that its affecting the growth rate, yield and overall happiness of my pants. I fret over them a whole lot for average to below average results. I don't want to fall into the expensive trap of ammending my garden with pre-made compost which my plants will rob of its nutrients, forcing me to buy it all over again. I definitely don't intend to use any sort of synthetic fertilizer, that's a bit scary for me.

So step 1: mulch. I used the grass that I chopped off at the edge of my plot to mulch between the pea plants, and i can already see some benefits. The soil around them stays wet longer than the exposed soil and weeds don't go quite as crazy, due to the lack of light. Now that my lettuce, radish, turnip, spinach and mustard green sprouts are a little sturdier I think I'll mulch around them, too. Probably with hay, because I've heard good things about it and huge amounts of it were scattered around my neighborhood during a sidewalk construction project. I think that I will borrow some of this, as it has served its civic purpose and it also has the added benefit of already being a little decomposed.

my hope is that, after frosts have knocked out sections of my garden i will fold the plant matter of these sections down, and cover the whole mess with a few inch thick layer of hay. Most of the hay and plant matter will all slowly decompose over the winter (I'll purchase worms and throw them in there if I have to), providing much needed organic matter. To improve drainage and make the soil a bit lighter so that if I plant root vegetables next year they won't struggle so much, I'm going to spend a few dollars on a bag or two of some kind of crushed volcanic rock. I'm also looking into soil-building forms of "biointensive gardening" (more on that later) which have their own methods which often don't call for mulch, but whatever I choose to do, better soil can't hurt.