Scorching the Garden 2018 Part II
Follow along as we Scorch the Garden for our 2018 season. From seed to harvest, we document the growing of the peppers for our 2018 batch, available in December 2018. This is a big year for us and we want everyone to be a part of it, and this is part 2.
Our next task was to carpet the surface. Normally, we would just lay the cardboard over whatever didn’t poke up too far but this is how we got the field. There is always some extra digging the first time you set up a garden. Next year, all that will need to be done is to spread out the mounds with a steel rake before laying the cardboard.
A few sheets of cardboard would be laid down, then some shaping of the earth, then cardboard, then shaping. It would have been nice if the plow had done that.
There were a few clouds that afternoon, but when the sun was out, it was hot. A few bamboo poles and a sheet of cardboard made a great shade.
As we lay down the cardboard, we would dump a bucket of compost. That helped keep the cardboard from sliding around. We wanted to use the stakes sparingly because they won’t be needed for very long and we don’t have that many.
Some rows were easier than others and the cardboard just fell into place. Other times, the compost had to be completely moved if the next row had some odd landscaping to it. This was fun, and no fun at at all. The fun part is transforming the land. The no fun at all comes into play with all those heavy buckets of compost.
What keeps us motivated as we dig and sculpt is thinking about the peppers and making the sauce, and of course, eating the sauce. Every bit worth the extra work. We also know that this is going to save us more time and work than we can appreciate.
It’s important to overlap the cardboard. There may be some weeds that might try to sprout up between the sheets, but they will be weak and scraggly. Easy to pull.
Where to put the peppers ended up being a bit of a puzzle. We kept having to dig little divots so the cardboard would form a bowl for the compost to sit in. The dirt we dug from one part of the terrace, we would use to build up the other side.
As we progressed, the landscape became more and more alien looking. Ripples of stony earth being replaced with warped and curling sheets beige spotted with clumps of dark, dark soil.
What seemed liked hours (it really was hours so things were on target), everything was dug. Everything was spiked. And nearly 100 buckets of compost was dumped.
That was the hardest part of the hardest part of the grow. But we aren’t out of the woods yet. In fact, we are about to be knee deep in woods-chips. Uh…hmm. Either way. This was back-breaking as it was all done by hand. BUT, we have a good idea of what is our roots are going to grow into.
Doing all of this now means we won’t have to spend all those horrible hours weeding over the next few months.
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It takes more than one pepper to Scorch a Garden.
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Garden at a Glance 2018
