garden tour

i took a trip down memory lane yesterday, revisiting old posts on rake shovel hoe, my now defunct garden blog. i am so thrilled to have that record, especially the photos, of my early gardening days. what's funny is that my excitement has not waned in the least. if anything, it has grown. here's a sampling of what's going on in the garden so far:

the peas are up, and climbing the trellis i made for them.



i may have created a harvesting nightmare, but, as usual, i plunged into the planting and making of the pea trellis without a clearly thought-out plan in mind. at the moment, these are cosmo's most closely watched plants in the garden. he likes to observe their little tendrils griping the twine, and climbing. but, he is also looking forward to the peas, and keeps asking when the plants will make pods. he's also asking about the husk cherries, which i have now taken to calling ground cherries.



those have been started indoors (along with peppers and tomatoes), but won't go into the ground until mid may, or so.



has anyone eaten tender pea shoots? i recently had them on a dish at a fancy restaurant (pictured here, on top of yummy stuffed peppers that my sweetheart made), and was so impressed i had to grow some myself.



of course, i read up on how to grow your own pea shoots AFTER, i had already started mine. i did everything wrong, but they shot up in about 4 days anyway, and now, less than a week later, they are ready to harvest!

as much as i despise having a big white tent in my garden, i am pleased with how happy my cabbages, broccoli, brussel sprouts and kale are doing under cover. the cabbage moths just flutter about the garden, wishing they could get inside, to lay eggs on my lovely brassicas. they, too, want their offspring to dine on my broccoli. DENIED!



the arugula and cilantro that over-wintered out there (in the cold frame) is already bolting! no worries though, we have more of those started.



we've already begun to enjoy a few salads from our baby greens, and the butter crunch lettuce is starting to take shape. though the carrots and beets were planted almost a month ago, they still seem so tiny.



one of the beds of rye cover crop was getting so tall, i decided one evening to trim it. with some clippers. why? not sure. these things just occur to me.



the next day i turned it over, so i'm not sure what the point of trimming it was, but i enjoyed myself. i planted some hairy vetch in there a bit too late in the fall, so most of it didn't make it, but i did notice a few strands of it in there. now all the rye is turned under, and it will be ready for corn, pumpkin, and beans (three sisters) plus okra, cucumbers and dill in the other bed. some of these have already been started indoors, though we have run out of space under our grow light. a sunny window sill will do, at this point.



the onion sets i planted are up, and look great, as does the garlic, which is getting big. i planted a row of morning glories along the side of the woodshed, and a few sunflowers. it might be too early for those... guess we'll see.

remember the great wall of tomatoes last year? well, the bed they were in now has tomato plants popping up like weeds, ALL OVER! the rye is supposed to suppress seed germination for a while. clearly that window has closed!

our landlords have four large beds of perennials, mostly flowers.



while i enjoy them immensely, i just don't have the time to invest in weeding them. currently, they are over-run with weeds. i got a hold of some free wood-chip mulch in my neighborhood, so i've been loading up the trunk of the car, hauling it home, and spreading it all over the perennial beds. i'm not sure if it is exactly the right kind of mulch for them, but it's what they get. life is too short to worry about other people's flowers.

especially when there's a vegetable patch to endlessly fuss over.


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apologies for the lousy color on these photos. for some reason, all the photos are showing up in blogger over-exposed, no matter what they look like on my computer prior to being inserted in a post. go figure.