The sowing season; first bush beans sown

Things are moving fast at the moment; seedlings are popping up all over the place; all their heirlooms sown a week or so ago are showing, pretty much close to a 100% germination rate. Everything else in the same tray - white sage, cilantro, summer savory - are also looking strong, except the later sowing of zucchini, which havent shown yet. Yesterday, Mar 16, I sowed 6 pots of Bush Beans "top crop", and from now on, I hope to sow more beans every week or so. Today I'm pre-soaking some "Insuk's Wang Kong" (or, as I fondly call it, "Insuk's Giant Wang"). These are supposedly heat-resistant runner beans, something extremely important here in Almaden Valley. This is just the first wave - I picked out six of the blackest seeds to sow, and will harvest some of these as seed for next year. I'll also keep some of the pinkest ones together and save the pinkest seed from them. No particular reason other than tinkering with evolution.

Everything else is doing well now, the first pea sowing in the allium bed is showing plenty of flowers given the few plants that survived the ?slugs? and even a pod. The first Fava sowing is showing nice flowers now (about a foot high), and the second sowing is several inches high.

I am taking apart the winter compost heap at the moment - everything is unrecognizably black, but its still a little clumpy - and spreading it over the bed by the fence. The worms and rain should take it in, and it will protect the soil somewhat. I'm attempting to convert to no-till, but I'm not convinced on that yet. I'm not a purist though, I'm still digging in some stuff like chicken bones (from stock) to provide phosphates and calcium while avoiding rats etc. Overall, my goal is to make this ground the richest, blackest, most friable topsoil you ever saw, at the same time saving a load of rubbish from the county waste pickup system. I firmly believe that there is a massive crunch coming in terms of civilization, largely tied to the end of peak oil, and that we need to start thinking as locally as possible. Disposing our garbage as close as possible, and harvesting our food as close as possible. Of course, presently there are limits to what is acceptable in the urban environment, so I'm mainly limiting myself to composting grass clipping, street leaves and vegetable trimmings. But the day will come when we no longer discard our own manure and foul up some faraway place with it. Instead, it will be growing massive amounts of great food. I also foresee backyards with chickens and rabbits providing protein and wonderful eggs. Some people in San Francisco are even raising mealworms for human consumption. Like I say, there are limits.

Summer Winds is selling nice square wood planting fixtures, about 5-foot by 5-foot by one foot high that you can fill with soil/compost/etc. for raised beds. They look good, but at $60? $80? (I can't remember) they ain't cheap. The design is simple though, maybe worth building something with wood from Home Depot? The main advantage I suppose is that you dont have to dig - just stick it on the soil and fill.