kalegrower

Finally, on the first day of summer it is SUNNY!

We are now eating kale, spinach or chard every day. The spinach is just about done, but the kale is just getting started.  The potato plants and garlic are growing like crazy and  hopefully the raspberries will start to ripen soon.

Haven’t spent any time blogging as all my time has been about pulling up weeds.

On the left are our super attractive rain-barrels which are located at the back of the garden.  They collect minimal rain themselves, so we pump the water from the rain barrel under the roof (below). Needless to say, right now all of the barrels are full.

I can’t remember if I mentioned this before, but I am a “bus talker”. A few weeks ago I ended up having a conversation with an elderly Asian man about the weather and he assured me that it would be a “very hot summer!”  I keep hoping he is right!

Last weekend I was bragging to Ward, the City Farm Boy  about my fabulous garden.  Actually, I guess it doesn’t really count as bragging, because he built it. Anyway, I was telling him about how everything is starting to come up – radishes, kale, potatoes and lettuce.  I am particularly happy about the lettuce because I had about a 95% germination rate, and so they were coming up in rows, perfectly spaced.

Well.  I spoke too soon…yesterday I went out and most of the green lettuce is gone. GONE! There were a few other lettuce shoots (they have four leaves now) were just laying on the soil, as if they were being eaten from the roots up. So, of the 120 or so shoots that I originally had, FOUR survived.

If it stops raining, I will got out and take a picture of my remaining lettuce.

The good news is that the potatoes are now coming up.

PS – the next day when I went out to take a few photos, the rest of the veggies were chewed up!  Grrr. You can see the radishes above and the spinach below. I sprinkled eggshells all around for snail voodoo.

Yesterday, while waiting in line for a beer at Blackcomb, I stood behind a guy wearing the most shockingly incredible Helly Hansen ski pants:  they had a pattern of hot pink martini glasses balanced out by silhouettes of grey tractors, all on a glaring white background.  So bizarre and visual – I couldn’t believe it.  So I said “Hey! Wow! Those are amazing pants!”.

He said, “Uh……..pardon?”

“Those pants! They tell me that you are a martini-drinking farmer!” I said. “Or an alcoholic gardener!” So, the guy (who was about 50 with good hair) turns around, kind of squints at me and says “Uh, yeah”.  He changed the subject by asking if I was “skinning the back” (at first I didn’t know what he was asking so I said “Uh….pardon?”) and then we had a good conversation about  back country sking.

For the rest of the afternoon, I kept thinking about how those pants would be ideal for a martini-drinking gardener like myself.  Tried to find some on the internet today, but I wasn’t successful; I couldn’t even find the pattern to include in the blog.

One less epic fashion crime…I guess.

Kate Spade in the garden

In 2004, when I was still over-employed and highly paid, I splurged on a fabulous Kate Spade handbag.  Really lovely – compact, black microfiber with white top stitching on the handles. Within two weeks, the stitching started to unravel and so I took it back to Holts. Apparently it couldn’t be replaced or exchanged, so they offered to repair it.  Three weeks later I pick up my bag and within a short time, the stitching on the remaining handles started to unravel, so I just decided to live with it. Despite the stitching, the bag served me well, and only recently has it started to look really used.  Voila…. My styling new garden bag for ties and garden tools!

Every time I start to do something in the garden, I see more and more things that need to be done, so I get distracted and start on something else and then the afternoon is gone. It is like an obsession and it keeps me from getting other important weekend things done.  Instead of the “weekend warrior” approach, I need to spend 15 minutes a day pulling weeds or pruning and then just STOP.

Lily-of-the-valley sprouts

On the weekend I resolved to do 15 minutes a day in the garden.  Late this afternoon I pulled weeds on the side of the house and saw all the lily-of-the-valley sprouts (left).

I also started to clean out the bottom forsythia branches – many are taking root in the soil and many others are dead – but I stopped myself and decided to leave that until another day.

My not-so-careful planting plan is totally messed up.  When I made the plan, I did it according to the whole “crop rotation” concept, devoting one planter to each type of “crop”, however I didn’t actually work out where in the planter things were specifically planted, nor when they were planted and as a result, I don’t have as much room as I expected.

I had intended to alternate the potatoes with parsnips as they are companion vegetables and are both in the root vegetable family. Problem is, the potatos were planted in trenches in March, and they still haven’t come up so the dirt from the trenches is piled up between each trench, so I haven’t been able to plant the parsnips there. Instead, the parsnips, carrots (purple and mini ones) as well as four rows of beets were planted in the cruciferous planter, next to the kale.

So in my spring enthusiasm, I planted chives and scallions in the herb planter and then filled the rest of the planter with  alternating rows of lettuce, radishes and spinach.  Okay, no big disaster there – I can replant in the summer with flowers and herbs when the lettuce and spinach are consumed.

Also replanted my old plants in the new stone planter. This has some pretty bad soil; the planter was back filled with material that was removed for the wall foundation and so contains lots of rocks, sand, clay.  I added several bags of manure and when I put my plants in I added lots of sea soil around the roots. Fixing the soil in this area is going to be a long-term project.  This is also where I was thinking of putting the tomatoes…..

And, I planted leeks inside, for next winter. Now I just have to remember to water them.

Yesterday, I took my people to the winter farmers market where we had some lunch (chevre crepes and maple syrup candy) and we stocked up on eggs, fish, apples and lots of dried things: vegetable medley, apples, oregano and tomatoes. I was disappointed that I didn’t see any kale, so we pointed that out on the market survey (see below).

I am always amazed at what my people find most interesting at the farmers market; yesterday the mushrooms were the big hit. The way that the vendor carefully peeled tiny little enoki mushrooms off the bunch and presented one to each of us, made them seem rare and precious. This morning the guys were excited to see them in crepes along with baby shitake’s, fresh tomatoes and feta.

Lots of action happening in our garden lately….more posts and photos to follow.