The Surprise of Spring.

I've complained a lot about the poor production last year. Summer lasted about two weeks. This winter was very mild too. Although earlier this year it seemed spring would never reach us, we finally made the switch. Temperatures are at least in the 50's now and we are having sun breaks nearly everyday. Even yesterday, which had a terrible bike ride in steady rain and gusty winds in the morning, resulted in a pleasant ride home with light sun and scattered clouds. It's getting nicer and the garden knows it.

There were a lot of plants I just left at the end of last year out of frustration. I didn't even want to deal with them and they could die slowly over the winter and do what they do. Turns out, they didn't die over the winter and we are already harvesting! Let's have a look around:




Little broccolis that never made it over a couple inches last year have revealed themselves as purple sprouting. The heads aren't large, but for being ignored and unweeded for the winter, I'm pretty happy with that.





The chard survived with flying colors. The red chard last year never got very large and we didn't harvest much, but they have suddenly swelled this spring. I gave them a nice thinning last weekend and it looks like we could start harvesting more leaves already.




I bought this rosemary back when I lived in big house with a bunch of roommates and I started my first real garden on my own. I kept the rosemary in a pot on the back porch and it moved here with me. The pot broke and half the root system of the rosemary was exposed. It sat like that for an entire season because I didn't know where to put it (and I was lazy). We finally settled with a spot on the corner of the house and it did well in the ground for a bit. We aren't sure what happened, but half the plant died. Perhaps it got waterlogged over a wet winter, I'm not sure. Rosemary is a very hardy bush and grows well here. People all around have four foot and more diameter rosemary bushes in their yards. I'm hoping the flowering is a good sign and it will grow big and strong and odorous this year.





Speaking of perennial herbs, the oregano is returning. I also bought this oregano when I lived in the big house with roommates and it has traveled with me and received equally poor treatment as the rosemary, but it keeps coming back. I put it in the ground last year, but it had been potted its whole life prior. It seems to like the extra room.




There is hope yet that I will successfully grow a cabbage. These should have been harvested last fall, but they never grew more than a few inches. Looking good so far for a late spring harvest.



We might even get a harvest from our cover crop. I put out clover and fava beans as a nitrogen fix to cover the bare areas at the end of summer last year. The fava beans took hold well and they are now flowering. It would be a nice surprise to be able to get a small harvest from something unintended.

Seedlings.

It's almost time for some of the seedlings to graduate to the yard. This weekend I'm setting out the cabbage and broccoli.

This is my best cabbage. I'm really excited about them; the variety is Mammoth Red Rock. I hope they turn out like they sound.




Something funny happened with a lot of my seedlings. They grew tomatoes off to the side. The best I can come up with is that there were tomato seeds in my compost. I mixed seedling mix and our own compost from the worm bin for all the seedlings. Tomato seeds are hearty and survived the decomposition process and weren't eaten by the worms. There are random tomatoes in about one out of every five pots.




This is my best broccoli. It is the same variety I grew last year, DiCicco, but these seedlings seem a lot stronger and larger than they were last year. The yield last Spring was great, so I'm sure this season will be even better.




The lettuces aren't going out just yet, but this is my best lettuce so far. I can't wait for summer salads.

Report Card.

Planted in the garden today:

• 1 row Northern Lights Swiss Chard
• 1 row Rainbow Carrots
• 1 row Napa Carrots
• 1 row Bloomsdale Savoy Spinach

Harvested from the garden today:

• Last batch arugula (it's starting to flower. Seeds soon!)

Delayed from the garden today:

• Sowing more peas
• Transplanting cabbage and broccoli to garden

I ran out of time to sow the peas. I'll have to get up extra early tomorrow for that one. As for the cabbage and broccoli starts, they are delayed due to weather. The next two days are highs in the 40's and raining. I'm going to wait until this little chilly snap is gone and we are back in the 50's. I don't want to freak the little guys out.

Busy.

We were busy in the garden this weekend. I'll post pictures soon. The little starts in the window are starting to get bigger and there are some sprouts outside too - peas, radishes, onions and kale! On the agenda this weekend was:

-Starting tomato seeds
-Sowing more radishes and spinach (two rows of each)
-Pruning the raspberry vines
-Buying seed potatoes
-Planting two grape vines
-A little weeding

Next up on the agenda in the coming few weeks:

-Transplanting broccoli starts outside
-Sowing beets and onions outside
-Making potato towers and planting the seed potatoes
-Building a proper raspberry trellis
-Weeding beds around berry bushes and rosemary. Insert edging to make it look nice!

The busy season is fast approaching. I'm feeling much more relaxed and confident about the things I planted last year like broccoli and peas. But I'm stressing out about things I haven't done before like grapes and potatoes. I guess it's all a learning experience and if something doesn't turn out well this year, I'll do it better next.

Transfer.

I spent a little time this afternoon with my seedlings. I have a couple seed trays with 1" pots where I start all my seeds. Last year I transplanted straight to the garden from the 1" pots. I didn't realize until I got further along in the season that the starts would fare better and get larger if I grew them in a larger space. There just wasn't enough space for the roots to expand. So, this year I am starting in the 1" pots and moving them over to 3" pots once they get large enough in hopes of having heartier starts to put out in the garden.

I transplanted the broccoli and cabbage over to the larger pots. Grow, little broccoli, grow!!

The window is filling up now.

I don't know what I'm going to do when I get new windows and I lose my perfect southern-facing window ledges.

Broccoli Season.

Broccoli was one of the first seeds I planted inside this year. They were my first sprouts way back in late February. I planted nine broccoli starters and I transplanted all of them. And then I added a few more as direct seed once the weather warmed enough. That's great, except that means that all my broccoli are maturing at the same time. Yesterday I harvested about five heads of broccoli...and a healthy dose of peas, and some skinny little radishes, and three raspberries, and one strawberry.

I also made homemade corn tortillas for the first time. They were so easy! Corn flour + water = dough. Roll into balls, press, grill for 30 seconds. Done.

We ended up having broccoli enchiladas for dinner last night. Tortillas are going onto the “Never Buy at the Grocery Store (unless in a pinch)” list along with bread and English Muffins. The next will be bagels.

Green harvest.

We had a good haul today. Harvested from the garden this afternoon:

• 1 head Romaine lettuce

• 1 head Salad Bowl lettuce

• oodles of green onions

• 2 heads broccoli

And the other day we harvested another batch of sugar snap peas and we got our first good batch of shelling peas!

Planted in the garden today:

• 1 row Dragon Tongue beans

• 1 row Empress green beans

• 4 pepper starts (bell and chile)

The garden goes on without me.

Well, I'm back. In my time away I got to visit a few friends' and family's gardens. I spent almost the entire time out of the kitchen (with the exception of making my now patented guacamole). I flew 3,000 miles and drove over 1,000. With my first day back in Portland I am jumping back into it with lots of veggie harvesting, weed pulling, garden cleaning, baking and cooking.

I'll have to write about my travels later as my garden exploded while I was gone!

Have you ever seen spinach bolt? Neither had I. Check it out. Aaaah!

I spent this afternoon pulling all the giant spinach stalks out of the garden and harvesting the leaves I could. This gave me two giant bowls packed full of spinach, most of which I am going to freeze to enjoy over the summer. Mike already harvested and froze another giant bag of spinach while I was gone.

There are broccolis now! I find the broccoli plants a little annoying, because for the little heads that are on it right now the plants are about 20 times bigger. I'm hoping the harvest from these guys is worth the space they take up.

There are tomato flowers!

I need to find a recipe for chard soon.

The carrot tops look like real carrot tops now instead of whispy little weeds like they did before I left.

Lettuces are doing great. We are going to have to start having salads more often.

The peas are perhaps the most exciting. Before I left they were just starting to grow and I was afraid I would miss out on all the fresh peas. Boy, was I wrong. There is a container in the freezer already of fresh picked peas from when I was gone, and I went out today and harvested another big batch. I ate one and just about fell over. It was one of those moments when you realize you have never had a pea before in your entire life. You have only had some bastardized, dumbed-down version of a pea that is a mass produced and sold in a bag. My eyes have been opened. I love peas.

Some of the cherries are already starting to turn red. We think they might be Rainier cherries, which is a little disappointing since we both love Bing cherries. Damn.

The herbs are taking off and doing well.

Look, ma! My cilantro is big!

I'm going to have to make some Mexican food soon so I can put some more seed in the pot. Is there a Mexican dish with chard, spinach and peas? Hmmm....

I'm especially happy to be home because I get to see this every day again.

Until next time when I will cover Texas Gardens: part deux, Colorado gardens and riding horses is the rain.

On the last day of March.

It was surprisingly sunny today. After several days of downpours of rain and cold temperatures, there was a break today and I got my gardening for the week done. I harvested the rest of the first batch of radishes, which will be turned into dinner tonight (one more day without the grocery store!).

I re-sowed radish seeds to replace the ones I harvested. I sowed some more onions and our first outdoor lettuce seeds as well as chard, carrot and broccoli seeds. And, I transplanted my broccoli starters into the garden. This one was pretty exciting. I was so proud of my little guys. I raised them from seed in the safety and warmth of the living room, and now they are outside in the big, bad world of the front yard. Good luck, little broccolis, I hope you fare well.

And, lastly, I'm starting my pepper seeds inside. These will probably be a colossal failure as I just read about how large varieties don't do well in our climate and the two varieties I bought have the words “Giant” and “Grande” in their names. Oops. That's what I get for impulse buying seeds.

The fruit trees are doing their thing. The plum tree has lost it's flowers and is in leaf stage now, but the cherry tree is in full bloom.

And so is the pear tree in the front yard. This one is my favorite; maybe it's because it's at eye level, but I think the blooms are just beautiful.

Although the don't smell very good.

And the sad little apple tree, whose prune job makes you want to cut it down and start over, is starting to bloom too. I'm hoping with a few years of loving pruning we can get this guy back on track.

Break time.

I'm on break from gardening this week. I had surgery on my arm yesterday and got the plate and screws taken out. Compared to getting them in, this is nothing. I'm sure I'll be feeling fine in a couple days once the incision starts to heal, and I'll be back to gardening in a week or so.

I got a lot of things started before my surgery so that my gardening calendar for the next two weeks is almost empty. I planted some cilantro, lettuce and cauliflower seeds. My Siskiyou Sweet onions are sprouting and the broccolis continue to grow. You can see the radish sprouts from across the yard now and the plum tree has more and more flowers on it.

In addition to being a first-time homesteader and I am also a first-time homeowner. And this means making the yard look pretty on top of being functional. On the side of the house we have decided to plant a few bushes and create a border along the side of the house. The day before my surgery I finally got the grass cleared enough for the first bush and got it into the ground. I stole some dirt from the summer bed, as we aren't going to plant anything there until May anyway, and we can get another load of dirt later. I got some dirt around the little tiny rhododendron and I now I can see the vision of what the side of the house will look like when we are done. It's going to look really nice. Here's Tim helping me. He ate some grass and then puked next to the rhododendron. Sweet guy.

So, I'm not going to have anything to add the next few days. I'll let you know if I watch any good movies. Sometimes it's nice to have days when you are required to sit on the couch and do a movie marathon.

Baby Worms! Aw-w-w!

Last December we started a couple projects to make our house more sustainable. We made a worm compost bin so we can make our own soil and a doggy septic tank so we don't fill our garbage with poop and it can biodegrade. I didn't take any pictures of the septic tank, it's just a garbage pail in the ground with a bunch of dog poop in it. And who wants to look at that, really? I did, however, take pictures of baby worms!

Mike is out of town this weekend. He went up to Seattle to ride the Chilly Hilly on Sunday. Good luck, Mike! I love riding a bike, but I'm not such a fan of the hills, personally. Mike has taken over as the keeper of the worms and has taken care of their feeding and bedding and well being. Since he's gone this weekend I got to feed the worms. We have them in storage bins that we converted to a little worm condo. It's in the weird little closet behind our fireplace.

Check it out – baby worms! They're breeding!

Today I had coffee grounds and spinach ends and carrot peels and onion bits for them to eat. I hope they like it.

And here are my little baby broccolis! They all sprouted! Very exciting. Still no sprouts anywhere else though.

Failures and Successes

It's 10:30am and I have already eaten breakfast, drank some coffee (and a little more coffee), and sowed peas, kale, spinach and radishes. Oh, and we had our first sprouts this morning! It's sunny outside today, partly anyway; it's been back to rain and muck the last few days. Tomorrow the rain starts again until the end of time, also known as July. I grew up in Central Texas, a place that doesn't really have distinct seasons. Well, I take that back. It's a place that has two seasons, Spring and Summer. Year round it's either pretty mild, or it's really hot. Winters sit in the 60's most of the time, with gross fluctuations on either side for a couple days, but when Spring comes around there you know it from the wildflowers and the fact that it's 90 degrees before 10am. I'm living in a place now that really has all four seasons. It may not snow here in the winter, but it does rain, and winter has a very distinctive feel to it. It's so amazing to be someplace where the entire city collectively rejoices when Spring starts to poke through. There is such eagerness and excitement and you just feel in your bones that it's time to start growing things, to start things fresh. It's instinctual.

On that note, I would like to recommend the blog of a friend of mine from back in my college days. She is living a couple hours outside of the other Portland in Maine with a very similar goal and similar end to me. But she is a lot more eloquent than I am.

So, the first sowing of kale, spinach and radishes was about a week and a half ago. Nothing. We got nothing. The soil might have been too loose when we first planted and the seeds fell through or dried out. It might have been that we got some frost a couple mornings. Or that I watered late in the day and it cooled the seeds down too much when the sun went down. Maybe we watered too much, or not enough. I went out and dug up a couple corners to try and find what went wrong. There was a kale seed I found that had sprouted, but never made it to the surface. Maybe they were planted too deep. Anyway, massive failure on the first sowing. I just did the second sowing and the soil has packed down a bit now after being rained on for a week, and I think it will be more conducive to creating a nice bed for those seeds to germinate. Though, like I said, the rain is coming back tomorrow, forever and ever. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I also got the first sowing of peas set up in the back along our fence. I fertilized some, but I didn't use an innoculent. I did some research and people were split down the middle of the necessity of it. My Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades told me that most soil in this part of the world has enough of the right bacteria in it to start that an innoculent isn't necessary, and just a little bit of fertilizer should get your legumes off to a good start. So, I sowed, I fertilized, and now I wait, again.

Our one success so far is the sprouting of broccoli starters! Five seeds have sprouted so far. This is very exciting. There is hope for feeding ourselves yet.