Mulch rules!

All that garden, and I can “weed” it in minutes, the first time I’ve weeded at all since planting almost a month ago.  By weeding I mean pluck out the few visible wisps of grass seeded by the hay, and only where the mulch is too thin.  So I spent more time piling on more hay.  It’s melting fast into the ground.I planted garlic far too late.  About six months too late.  I had these luscious heads from West Coast Seeds that were delivered last September.  But I was moving last September, so I took them with me, and we didn’t move in here until spring, and then built the garden late, so I end up guiltily contemplating these heads of garlic in June.  It seems a shabby way to treat  six beautiful heads of Russian heritage garlic.  I rationalized that they spent the winter in temperature uncontrolled storage, so they definitely froze, and they’ve been in the dark, and they certainly won’t be any good next year.  Some of them were trying to grow, in that way that onions forgotten in the crisper do.  So I planted them, deep.  All over through the tomatoes.  It looks like a gopher was punching holes in the mattress of mulch.  I figure, we’ll never know if they’ll work or not without trying.  Sure enough, the more advanced cloves are already punching through.I love the way there are so many types of green.  Celery green, bean green, pea green, garlic scape green, squash leaf green, corn green, and tomatoes hold multitudinous greens just among themselves.Since it’s all a giant experiment, I’m interested in observing what does well in the clay and manure soil I concocted.  So far, potatoes are flourishing, and beans are the happiest of all.  Peas are coming well, and the squashes are ok.  The seed lettuce is struggling, which I didn’t expect, while the lettuce from starts is generally just fine, red romaine much happier than the leaf lettuces.  The carrots are really showing poorly, spinach even worse, and the tomatoes are expressing their displeasure, although still growing.  All else is average.