#outside is too hot and they'll be programmed to bolt immediately

[jensownzoo]

And there we go! Done enough to plant in.

Got the inner board along the front rim plus the two extra supports in place so it shouldn't bow terribly. I would like to paint the boards eventually so it looks nicer, but when I considered doing that now I nearly cried. So, maybe an autumn task then. Maybe by then I'll have the lumber for a top rail too, who knows?

Anyway, got 10 Japanese sweet potato plants and 9 cucumber plants in, placing a handful of alfalfa meal in each planting hole to hopefully counteract the inevitable nitrogen tie-up that mixing in all those wood chips will do.

As a bonus, I yanked up all the cosmos in my spearmint/strawberry/fennel bed to let those plants get some sunlight and breathing room and replanted them along the back of this new bed. If they make it, great. If not, oh well. I will give them a thorough watering each evening. If they act like the others that I transplanted earlier this season, they'll get wilted during the day and perk up at night and finally settle in a few weeks. By that time the cucumbers will be looking for something to climb and those stems are thick and sturdy.

So I've ended up with basically four 3' x 4' interconnected beds, which is nice. I'll be able to transplant peonies and spiderwort into the two outer beds this fall and fill the inner two with flower seed (cosmos and marigold and candytuft and others) to stratify over the winter.

I still need to dump scoops of worm-laden compost into the beds, but the stuff in the rotating composter is full of soldier fly larva right now and I'd rather not have the opossums digging up all the plants. Maybe I'll just harvest out what I need by hand and give the rest to the chickens as a treat. Right now I'm too tired.