Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Produce is arriving!






Yeah! We now have lettuce, spinich, and celery for our fresh salads. The Romaine is particularly tasty, but the Bibb and Green Lollo lettuce, as well as the Spargo spinich are all welcome contributions to the table.

The pictures tell the story - the plants are growing, and much better than last year, thanks to Aaron's suggestion to "double-dig" the soil to get better drainage. Our neighbors kindly allowed us to take down a tree, brush and vine area just south of the garden, which was providing us too much shade. So it will be interesting to see the effect of full sun in the next few weeks.

Since the last news, we've added quite a few food varieties: celery and string beans as planned, and also broccoli, asparagus, parsley and basil. The tomato rows have been interspersed with carrots (suggested by the book Carrots Love Tomatoes).

The "old" compost bin is not progressing so well as the "new one. The new one gets an addition of frresh grass clippings and a wheelbarrow and a half of horse manure each week. It is steaming! That's the good news. Bad news - DeDe's nose can pick up the action after each load of fresh grass clippings. We may need to work out a cover for the stew.

We were thinking of adding a bed of sweet potatoes, but we found out they are actually a vine in the morning glory family, so our space does not seem ideal for that, Maybe we can add them in afew years, if we continue to expand. We may examine regular potatoes instead.

The garden is lots of work and exercise - but that was the whole idea. And the results are much better thatn running up a stair-master - we have delicious food as a result.

Finally, thanks to Max, Nicholas, Tessa, and Madison, all who have helped water the garden plants.

1 comment:

Susie Beers Macciocca said...

mmmmm....loving the lettuce!!! Bring on the tomatos and carrots. OXOX love you Dad!