stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

The Smallest Animals In The World (Land, Air & Water!) - Fact Animal

An embarrassing artefact of the Google algorithm is that ridiculous claims make the top page based on popularity, not accuracy. A quick search for ‘the

factanimal.com

Ocean Nematodes: "...What we know is that both Desmoscolex sp. and Greeffiella sp measure in at around 0.08mm, making them one of the smallest animals in the water, and vindicating the claim that a true list of smallest animals would be infested with worms."

 

[flowerbug]

on to a new garden today to put up, i'm so excited! well, ok, i'm mildly enthused but the happy part will be going through and picking any dry beans that remain for me to harvest that i've missed up to this point or have finished up since the last time i went through picking. since there are likely actual beans to pick it will slow me down a bit but it is ok as i'm not really on any kind of a schedule other than working around the weather (and some days "whether or not i get my butt out to do it")...

 

[flowerbug]

working on another garden to get it put up for winter, dug a double wide (two shovel widths) trench for garden debris and then decided to double dig one more trench down because the ground is so compact under all of these gardens (once you hit the subsoil it's really hard to get a shovel through it).

most of it is likely due to many years of farming that does often create a hardpan layer that needs to be ripped or managed somehow (planting cover crops of deep rooted plants can help drill some better drainage if you have a few years).

once in a while when doing my normal fall routine of burying garden debris i do sometimes spot dig a hole deeper in the trench to help improve the drainage and to give worms an easier hiding spot down deeper with some organic materials in there for them. while i do see worm tunnels down through the heavy clay and hard subsoil i rarely see worms down that deep.

over these many years my efforts have established some worm populations in the various gardens but they are not a huge population because of Mom's preferences to not have any garden debris left on the surfaces of the gardens other than a few mulched areas and wilder spots which are often weed magnets - she also doesn't like cover crops. the closest thing i may get away this coming winter is leaving the cosmos and radishes patch alone as Mom said she'd like to see it with some snow on it. it will help keep weeds down until spring and i won't likely be able to get around to it anyways so we'll see how that goes.

but back to today's trench and all that, i got it dug out, came in for a break for a few minutes and then fell asleep for a few minutes longer than i wanted but i did get back out to get half the garden debris and a neighboring garden had some lily stalks that i cut down and put in that trench and also i had a bag of bean pods from shelling and other cooking veggie and fruit scraps. all went in there.

half way done, one more trench (not planning on double digging the 2nd round through the whole thing but i will probably put down a few divots to improve a little there while i'm digging) maybe tomorrow and i can be done with the rest of it and then move on to the last few smaller gardens i hope to get done before the ground freezes...

all up in the air depending on the weather now as to what i can get done outside.