red sky at morning...

...sailors take warning.

This was the sky this morning at 7am.  It was  beautiful predictor of a less than wonderful day.  I was hoping to have the morning to get a couple rows in the garden raised and seeded with cover crops but ended up finishing in the sprinkles and walking back to the house in the downpour.  We have had wind all day but only got about a half inch of rain.  I was able to get back out and snap a couple pictures of the cornfield.

This picture is what I was working on this morning.  In this picture the tan colored rows are the dry grass clippings that are mulching the permanent walking/picking rows.  The two rows on the right have been seeded with the oats and have sprouted and are about two inches tall.  The next two rows were planted a couple days ago but they have not sprouted yet.  The two black rows farthest left in the picture are the rows that were finished today.  There was a trench dug.  The trench has a layer of straw, then a layer of compost.  Then the soil is filled back in creating a raised area for growing.  Then the raised area was seeded with oats for a cover crop.  A quick guesstimate is that there is probably room for another ten raised rows in the area that held the vine crops and my hope is to get that area cleared of this year's vines and weeds and get those raised rows created and seeded while there is still time for the cover crop to get established.

Where the tomatoes are growing the raised rows were created in the spring and they just need to have the plants removed, a quick layer of compost added and the cover crop seeded.  Where the potatoes and sweet potatoes are still in the ground those root crops need to be dug  which hopefully will leave a trench that can have straw and compost added, soil replaced and cover crops seeded.

This is a picture of Row 7.  This is the center row of potatoes.  They have been dug up and a raised row created and seeded.  On either side are the permanent walking/picking rows which are mulched with the dry grass clippings and then the rows of potatoes still needing to be dug.  The plants have died back leaving only the weeds.  Hopefully soon we will have a striped south half of the garden.

In news of the greenhouse, it was cloudy today so the greenhouse was much cooler than it has been the past few days.  With the fan running we were still having 110+ degrees inside.  Yesterday I unplugged the heat mats.  We had a some of the first planted seeds germinate but the rest have not poked thru yet.  I don't know if the heat from the greenhouse is affecting it but I took off the clear plastic covers so it wouldn't cook any seedlings that did pop up a couple days ago and yesterday I unplugged the heat mat since it has been so warm in there.

My plan for seeding was to seed five trays of cell packs and as they germinated move them off of the mats and onto the tables near the glazing.  Today i decided that if i was not using the heat mats I would not be limited to what would fit on the mats and seeded two more trays.  Tomorrow I will plan to seed another couple of trays.  Hopefully soon the rest will germinate.  the ones that are germinated are getting a little bigger, some are an inch tall.    Having stuff growing in the greenhouse makes the end of the summer garden season not quite so sad.