Going to Seed

I was finally able to get out into the garden this evening during a very brief break in the rain. It has been very wet over the last several days. We got more than an inch and a half of rain just over the weekend and it has only slowed since.

Proof that the sun actually exists

I was glad that the rains paused so I could get a little work done. The garden does not look any worse for the recent soaking. I think the raised beds have allowed for decent drainage. The spinach and arugula have needed to be dealt with for some time now. The spinach bolted fairly quickly with the early arrival of hot weather. The arugula has since gone to seed too. I didn’t realize that it would get prickly as it got older. The flowers are lovely though.

Spinach gone to seed

Lovely little arugula flowers

I pulled out all the spinach and most of the arugula. Under the larger plants there were a half-dozen or so seedlings just starting out so I left them. Over the weekend I got a packet of mixed lettuce seeds. It certainly was not an ideal time to plant with the ground being so wet but at least I didn’t have to water the seeds in. It started raining again maybe half an hour after I went inside to wash the greens. I only planted about half the packet so if the seeds end up rotting instead of growing, I’ll have another shot at it.

After pulling the spinach and arugula and planting more seeds

In other garden news, the beets and turnips are growing very well. We’ll be eating some of them soon. All four varieties of tomatoes have set fruit with the Early Girls looking particularly nice. My sugar snap peas blew over in high winds we had a couple weeks ago. I did not realize they were going to grow five or six feet tall or I would have built better support. They’ve bounced back, though, and we should be eating peas by this weekend. And the corn is already knee-high days before the Fourth of July.

Early Girl tomatoes

Bent but not broken pea plants

The corn seems to be enjoying the weather

Oh, and guess who had babies…

Munchkin in the back yard

Yeah, and her too….

Twins!

How the Garden Grows

The other day, my husband and I were enjoying our morning coffee and tea on our back porch when a movement in the garden caught my eye. “There’s a squirrel in the garden,” I declared. “I don’t think it’s a squirrel,” my husband replied. “That’s the rabbit.”

Bunny enjoying a break in this evening’s rain

I recalled that part of the fence behind the asparagus was missing a cross piece. That must have been where the bunny got into the garden. So, we went out to evict the furry little creature. As I contemplated how we were going to capture the rabbit or chase it out with the least amount of disruption to the plants, it leapt at the fence and wiggled its way through the latticework. I didn’t think the spaces in the fence were large enough for it to fit through until I saw it with my own eyes. Long story short, later that day we added additional mesh to the fence. Other than some disturbed soil by the peppers where the rabbit probably made its entrance and a sampled beet green, the garden was unscathed.

Nearly-invisible added protection against ferocious bunny rabbits

 In addition to the unexpected potential of rabbit predation on the garden, we also discovered that flea beetles had been sampling some of the vegetables. The eggplants seem to be a particular favorite of the tiny insects but we found them on several other plants including the pak choi and the pumpkins. In the past, I have found Seven to be a mighty powerful weapon against the bugs but it is also mighty toxic to everything (including people). Since many of the greens were getting ready to harvest and eat and we’d rather not kill everything that enters the garden, we decided on diatomacious earth to discourage the beetles. So far, so good.

Other gardening chores over the last several days included laying straw around the strawberries and tomatoes, stringing line for the rattlesnake beans to climb and thinning the abundance of kohlrabi, turnip and kale seedlings.

Strawed berries and pak choi dusted with diatomaceous earth

Last Wednesday, I harvested our first vegetables from the garden – arugula with a few leaves of spinach and some baby beet greens and chard for color. We’ve enjoyed a couple salads so far and I’ve been able to make a second harvest of the greens. I love that at least part of the salad I eat for lunch at work has come from my own garden. I can’t wait until I can add other veggies to the greens.

The garden’s first harvest

Plenty more arugula to pick

There are ten gorgeous pak choi plants in the garden and they are all ready to be harvested. I have picked a few for tomorrow’s dinner but I can’t let the rest of them sit in the garden too much longer. I’ve done a little searching for pak choi recipes and will probably be experimenting with pickling and freezing over the next few days. Stay tuned for a report. Next year, I’ll have to remember to plant a few seeds at a time a couple weeks apart so they aren’t all ready at the same time.

Big, beautiful pak choi