Last week, in the garden. (May 30)
This morning, in the garden.
(If you're keeping garden notes and photographs and want to share it with the rest of us, do leave a comment with a link so that we may visit!)
Oh my goodness, what a difference two weeks makes! A week away, and heavy rain has meant little opportunity to tend the garden. But in my absence, oh how things have grown! Many things I want to grow, and some that I'd rather not. The forecast looks perfect and so does the calendar - the next few days will hopefully find me weeding, mulching and thinning just as much as we can be.
It has been wet, wet, wet...and I worry about the nitrogen being sucked right out of the ground. I'm thinking about side-dressing some things, but haven't decided for certain if I'll do that. I never have before. But then again, I've never paid such close attention to the soil. Despite the relative lack of sun, I do think things are growing well. I have planted cucumbers three times now with no luck, though...perhaps it's time to pop over to the greenhouse for some seedlings. I just can't fathom a garden without the cucumbers, or a summer without the cucumber sandwiches.
The "harvesting" is still quite small from this big space, and only in the form of lettuce and radishes and a whole lot of herbs, but we are enjoying those things entirely and watching closely for what might be next. The kale will be soon, and oh those peas! The mountain of dill I planted is looking fabulous and has me believing I just might grow enough to last us all year long with our very favorite popcorn (that's a lot of dill).
Each week there seems to be a new favorite thing in the garden that's I'm digging (hee). Right now it is the halo of belly wool from the sheep, serving as mulch around my cherry trees. And asparagus. It's coming up the most wispy, delicate and beautiful of plants, and just amazes me that we won't harvest it for years to come, but strong and steady it will grow all that time.
I've been enjoying (for lack of a better word) my weekly news once again this year from the MOFGA Pest Report. Sometimes (often) a sad report it is, as Eric shares what's happening around the state and what can be done. In our garden, it is the potatoes where they are hanging out this month - we have seen the three lined potato beetle and tortoise beetles too, but both - so far - seem to be managed just fine by hand. (Fingers crossed.) Adelaide is currently working on a book documenting the bugs we find in the garden this year in art and story. Leave it to her to make gardening not about the plants or what we eat, but rather about the living creatures we find there. (Love.) But I think I understand - I've honestly been enjoying my walk up and down the potato rows with someone at my side, walking a row over doing the same, a chore I try to convince someone to join me with each time I go. It's quiet back there in the garden with just two of us, and as we walk, we talk. The conversation so different with each of them, but always so insightful. All while picking bugs off plants in our little garden.
