Eighth of an Acre Bounty

It is always astonishing to me to witness all of the growth and change within a few short seasons. It happens every year but I am still surprised and giddy when the first passion flower blooms on the vine or the first flower appears on the bean stalks. I was looking back through my pictures and decided I just wanted to document the change and growth we have seen here in just a few months. We put in a new garden bed and extensively expanded our existing bed and now that they are all starting to produce, I thought it fitting to go back to the beginnings of the cold winter and spring months when it was all just a dream, seed packets and piles of dirt

Gary dug out a large portion of dead stump and several feet of rock hard clay soil this spring so that we could expand the main bed we put in last year. At this point in April we had erected the bean trellis but the only growing thing toward the back of the bed were the (still hiding) raspberry canes along the fence. Peas, spring onions and beets were in the foremost part of the garden, fenced off by the wire gate you see on the left.

After laying down a yard of compost in the clay I sowed pole beans, bush beans, arugula, kale and swiss chard. I also transplanted starts of fennel, kohlrabi, butter lettuce, leeks,  lemon cucumber and summer squash that had been hardened off in the cold frame for a week or so after starting from seed indoors.

It took a good part of June before things really started to take off.

This picture above is as of today. I have already pulled the peas (two varieties - a snow pea and shelling pea) and the first round of beets from the front of the bed. We are eating fennel, kale, lettuce, kohlrabi and spring onions and the bush beans are already setting pods.

In a meager attempt at crop rotation (and in concert with our larger goal of eradicating the lawn) we decided to make a new tomato bed in a largely unused section of turf near the house. Last year’s tomatoes went in the main bed and I am still pulling out volunteers. Gary (ever the digger) tackled yet another 2.5 feet of Skyway clay, making a nice hill for Hux to nap on.

We used broken up concrete pieces from an old walkway to create the raised bed and amended the soil with about a yard and a half of mixed compost and manure from Cedar Grove. The manure did wonderful things to my sickly tomato plants that were suffering from a pretty serious phosphorus deficiency due to the cold spring. I transplanted the starts on the same day we finished shoveling and hauling the compost. The amendments were still putting of a significant amount of heat and it perked the plants up within a day.

The photo above was taken a month ago today. Notice the self control and wide spacing I afforded each tomato plant. This lasted all of about 4 days before I realized I couldn’t bear to throw away any of the remaining tomato starts I had coddled since March, so I stuck several more plants in. Our neighbor gave us a bunch of Chinese broccoli starts she had to thin out of her garden right about then, so I stuck those between the tomatoes. We practice square foot gardening round here - 6 plants every square foot.

And we’ve got tomatoes, nary a red one in sight, yet….

Beaver Lodge Slicer

This year for tomatoes we are growing BeaverLodge Slicers, Super Marzanos, Black Russians, Tiffen Mennonites, a japanese plum variety I forgot the name of already and an Isis Candy. That along with a few volunteers I am allowing to grow from last year. Hopefully one of them will be the amazing Black Krim or a Principe Borghese for drying.