Winter Work

It’s still hard to believe it’s February when it feels like March. I keep having to remind myself what time of the year it is.

One of the Lemur Center technicians asked me if I liked winter gardening better than summer gardening today. I had to reply I liked summer better, even if the hot, sticky North Carolina summer days are brutal. Most of the winter is spent building soil and beds, but the summer is the time you get to sit back (when you’re not slaving in the summer heat with a hose) and watch your plants grow and produce.

This week I spent most of my time turning the soil in last year’s beds. We still have a gooey layer of clay, but the more it’s worked and the more organic matter we add to it, the better it will be for the plants. I also started an experiment: I turned four beds, but left two uncovered and covered one with grass clippings and the other with leaves and grass clippings. I am curious to see which will have the better soil…

The Fava beans (Vicia faba) are bouncing back finally. We planted these back in December, but the unusually hot weather almost killed them. All of them have new green growth on them and many have flowers on them. Hopefully the seasonably cold weather will return long enough for these to produce pods.

After a suggestion to grow Malabar spinach (Basella alba) for the lemurs, I started a new bed near one of the enclosures so we could use the fencing as a trellis. The ring-tailed lemur couple will definitely appreciate the shade during the summer months. It will be crucial to build up the area because the soil is full of sand, concrete and white, slick clay. Malabar spinach likes organic matter so I added chicken compost and grass clippings this week to kick things off. Definitely more work to be done though.

The worm populations in our three bins have at least doubled since we started them last fall. Each bin consumes a couple pounds of kitchen leftovers each week and we have three to four inches of worm castings to prove it. I pulled back a corner in each bin and pulled out a handful of healthy worms and worm castings. I can’t wait until April when we separate them and add the castings to the beds. Black gold, as I say. See the video!

Finally, I am spending my weekend counting seeds! Doesn’t sound fun? Oh, but it is! Charlie Welch and I went seed shopping last week, so I need to know how many seeds I have so I can plan the garden layout. All I can say is we’ll have enough cucumbers, squash and peppers to feed an army of lemurs. Thanks to the N.C. State greenhouse managers we have space to start all of our seeds.

Remember, keep checking out the photo album on the right for updated photos of the garden and feel free to email me (amwilkin@ncsu.edu) anytime
.