Summer Garden!

 After hours and hours of work and driving all over town to find the seedlings I wanted, I have my summer garden almost completely in.  I had to dig up all the beds, work some compost into our chunky clay soil, reset the watering system, and plant the seedlings.  Since I have four large beds and one small one, it took a good long while.  But it's almost done and it looks great!

Here's the diagram, and then I'll list the varieties with the photos below:

Top left, we have spinach (I forget the variety), peas (Progress No. 9), carrots (rainbow blend), two types of green beans (yard-long pole beans and blue lake bush beans), Beit Alpha Persian cucumber and spicy basil.  The spinach will be done soon, and then I plan to put a Juliet tomato there.

Top right is the tomato bed - last year it was top left, but I'm trying to rotate it among the two top beds, which get more sun that the two bottom ones due to neighboring trees.  Here are the heirloom varieties I'm trying this year: Evan's Purple Pear, Indigo Apple, Brad's Black Heart, Costoluto Genovese, Golden Jubilee, Porkchop, Heirloom Pineapple, Lush Queen, Sun Gold (not an heirloom), and Yellow Pear.  I've got three cherry varieties this year because they were such a big hit with the kids last year.  I couldn't find romas (!!!) for canning, so I've got 15 Healthkick and 9 Phoenix.

Bottom right, we still have a row of leeks from last summer, but they'll be coming out soon!  Then we have 18 red Better Belle II pepper plants.  In the center of this bed, a grey zucchini, one of my favorite varieties that you generally can't find at the grocery store or farmer's market.  I'll buy green and yellow ones from the market rather than growing them.  I planted two eggplants this year - should be just enough for eggplant parmesan, one of the few dishes I make with eggplant.  I picked the typical black beauty variety, plus one called Traviata.  If I find a rosa bianca variety, I may add another one, but I'm running out of space ...  Up in the corner, we have sweet basil, perfect for pesto.

In the middle, I have a small round bed with four poles that form a teepee.  I've planted the same yard-long pole beans at the base of each, with the plan to train the vines on strings that I'll tie horizontally to make "walls", leaving one side open for a door, so the kids can go hide in there.  At the moment, though, I've got lettuce growing in the middle and French breakfast radishes and two types of carrots growing around the edges.

And last, the lower left bed.  This one is a bit of a pain.  It has poor drainage, is in the lowest part of the garden, and gets the least afternoon sun, so it tends to stay damp, especially in the lower left corner of that bed.  The current tentative plan is to try growing some strawberries there (I know it's not an ideal location, but the kids picked them out, so I'm willing to give it a shot) and maybe some other less sun-friendly plants (heat-resistant lettuce?).  And on one side, I'd like to put in a sandbox for the kids.  Which will either be a lot of work, a lot of money, or both.  But it would have been SO helpful while I was busy doing all that digging and planting and watering.  I think it would still be useful as I keep caring for the garden with weeding, watering, and eventually harvesting, so I still hope to do it, and sooner rather than later (it's still more than 2 months until their birthday, so I don't know if it would be a birthday gift).  I may start trying to dig it out today!

Happy gardening!

Warm-weather plantings

Today I finally planted our warm-weather veggies. It's supposed to cool off a bit this week, but I'm not too worried at this point. I'm so excited to get my first glimpse of what my summer garden will look like.

Yesterday we drove out to Granite Bay for a wedding. I've had no luck in Davis finding 6-packs of the vegetables I want to plant - I guess most people don't garden at that kind of volume. So we stopped at this wonderful nursery in Granite Bay and found an amazing variety of heirloom tomatoes, peppers, and melons, as well as plenty of more standard varieties in 6-packs. I bought 24 roma tomatoes for sauce, and 5 heirlooms - Watermelon beefsteak, cherokee purple, black krim, black prince, and yellow brandywine. We also got 12 yellow bell pepper plants, 6 more green beans to replace the ones that don't look so good after the cold nights we had last week, one hot chili pepper for Loris, and two ambrosia melons. I bought 12 red pepper plants today, too.



Today was a big day, Loris helped me put the tomato stakes into the garden, and I planted all 30 tomato plants, plus all the peppers, melons, green beans, and two eggplants - black beauty and bianca rosa. I also finally got the watering system up and running without too much effort on my part. And what a hot day it was! But luckily, I've really done the majority of the work required to get the summer garden in. Now it's just a lot of maintenance - weeding, watering, and pruning the tomatoes. Until it's time for the garlic to come out, and then I can consider what to put there - another zucchini? Or a winter squash?

A few days ago I planted some more carrots and beets, even though I think it may be too warm for them now. I guess we'll see. I also put in some pickling cucumbers and Italian parsley. And in the backyard, I planted some yellow wax pole beans. I've never grown those before, and I have no idea how it'll work out. It's sort of an experiment.

And finally - we're starting to have peas! I've never grown peas or even eaten fresh peas as far as I know, so I'm a bit nervous and have no idea what I'm doing. I'm sure we won't have enough for them to be a main dish, but I'm excited that at least I'll learn for next year. Even though they're a bush variety and not vining plants, they're putting out little tendrils and trying to attach themselves to other nearby plants. I put one tomato cage on its side between two of the rows, and used a small trellis for the other ones. I tied some of the unruly plants up with string to keep them from clinging to the peppers.

The beginning of spring

It's wonderful to be out in the garden now. I just spent several days weeding, pulling out old, flowering winter plants, and turning compost into the soil. We still have some beets, carrots, and radishes, as well as chard and spinach.

This week, we sauteed beet greens with chard and last year's garlic. That was delicious. We've also roasted beets a few times as an appetizer, and they're wonderful. Too bad we didn't have enough for a real side dish. We've been eating lots of radishes, but I didn't plant any more than one bunch, so we'll be done with them shortly.

We've had some carrots, they were wonderful too. They smell so strongly of carrot as soon as I lifted them out of the ground. The first one I pulled was stunted and sad-looking. Uh-oh, I thought, after pining over carrots for months, we're not actually going to get enough to eat! Luckily, the next few were nice and big. After pulling off the tops of a few, and snapping a few in half with the bottom half still in the ground, I got the hang of loosening the soil around them before pulling them up. We still have some in the fridge, and some in the garden, too.

We harvested some of the leeks! They're still small, but they're very strongly flavored and delicious. Loris added some to a tomato sauce he made for our butterfish last weekend, and I sliced some up and sauteed them with anchovies to add to a big bowl of pasta, asparagus from the farmer's market, and parmesan cheese straight from Italy. I'm hoping I won't desperately need the space they're using, so I can let them mature a bit more in the ground before digging them all up!

The peas I planted right before leaving for Italy are doing well. The plants aren't huge, but they're thriving and starting to flower, which is great. I just planted about 15 green bean plants and a zucchini. We have some dill that seeded itself from last year growing among the carrots, too.

I think I'm going to move one of my stumps out of the way, dig up the overgrown parsley from last year, and extend my sauce tomato row all the way to the edge of the garden. I just need the space too badly. I have parsley in our backyard, and I'll plant a bit more in the garden, too.

The lettuce is the real problem, with the warm temperatures we're having it's growing faster than we can eat it. I pulled out four of the green heads because they're starting to bolt, but now the red lettuce is looking ready to go and we still have so much green left. It's becoming a challenge to eat it all! I did end up planting a new batch of red lettuce in pots in the backyard, where it tends to be shadier and cooler, better for our warm springs and summers.

The last thing to mention is the garlic. It's huge, again this year. And the shallots look great, too, I'm very excited to harvest all of this. I hope to braid the garlic this year. Last year I hung it all in our gear closet, but the dried leaves are breaking off and getting everywhere. We really could use a better storage method. We also have a ton left from last year - pretty soon we'll have to make roasted garlic and garlic soups just to use it up before this year's crop.

The rest of the spring veggies will be going in soon! We're having some cold weather this weekend, but I'm hoping to get stuff in early next week! Hooray!