Planting Sunflowers

Sunny in the morning, 60 degrees and cool, but the wild winds of the past days have died down.  No frost forecast overnight for the next week, so I planted the sunflower seedlings.

It's early, but they are under the elaborate wire and bird netting cages I built last winter, and I can throw a blanket over all if it's expected to get into the 30s.

I could not get the wire tomato cages into the ground deep enough to have the lowest rung contact the earth, so I turned them upside down, with the prongs in the air, and used soil staples to hold them down.

I hope this works!  As they grow and the stems get woody and less susceptible to critters eating them, I think I can take the cages off.  This is an experiment in progress.

I used the cool early morning to turn the compost windrow with a pitchfork.  Hard work.  The grass clippings pile up into a solid mass, unaerobic and horribly slimy below.  The whole pile needs frequent turning and some brown material to break up all the green decomposition.