By Andrew Haupt
Collected soil samples from the meadow to send off to the lab at UMass for a soil sample. I’m itching to get the results back -- the soil seems dark and loamy once you get past the sod, and I noticed a good chunk of worms as well. The mica also leaves your hands shiny -- I think that indicates silt but I really can’t tell.
I potted up some of the pepper starts. Three out of the four varieties are afflicted with some kind of fuzzy white mold. It appears on the outside of the soil blocks and on some of the seed coats. The strange thing is that those three varieties are the ones that seem to dry out faster, while the Costeno Rojo look like they’re thriving and not affected at all. I dusted the tops with cinnamon after reading that can help, and removed the ones that are covered in mold. None of the other starts seem to have it yet, so fingers crossed it stays that way.
We planted the ten cherry trees in the other meadow plot. Originally we were going to make chicken wire cages, but I don’t see any evidence of gophers down there and deer could still get to them anyway. At $2 a pop, it’s an interesting and low risk experiment at the very least. We planted a row on either side of the meadow, with the idea that they’ll form a canopy eventually, and made brush cages for all of them.
