Early Spring Planting

Spring planting is an actual thing where I live. It feels cruel given the arctic chill blanketing most of the rest of the country, but all I can say is, you get summer. We don't.

Getting money's worth out of new spring hat and knee socks from Target

Here during one of a recent string of 70-ish degree days, we planted radishes, lettuce, basil, cilantro, sugar snap peas and broccoli rabe. The kids put in carrots and flowers (ugh). This was all thanks to my husband, who spent a good chunk of time last weekend dealing with the weeds that had crept, then galloped, into the vegetable patch.

Over the winter, about every two weeks I planted lettuce, b. rabe, and a few other things that are supposed to be fine in cool weather. The rabe mysteriously sprouted very tall flowers before eking out a few heads (not edible). I have a few lettuce heads doing fine. That's about it - it has not been a four-season garden this year. In addition to gardener laziness, we did have a crazy rainy December, which definitely washed away a few sowings, and then basically dry for January and February.

"Hmm... where can I randomly scatter more seeds?"

The kids were pleased to get out there today and seemed to forget the squabbling that has dominated this weeklong school break. They even shared seeds. My son had a baggie of harvested zinnia seeds from his Zinnia on Steroids that was the shining star of his garden last year. I think between the two kids, they sprinkled them all on a one-foot square area. Should be showy in a couple months!

Sowing Winter Crops

Mid-harvest

"Winter" is more of a state of mind than a weather shift around here. It was 70 yesterday, and we wore shorts for our garden work. (By the way, 70 is higher than the summertime average in our town. We get fog cover in the summertime.)  I finally pulled out two more cherry tomato plants, with some assistance, although the SuperSweet100 still has ripening fruit on it so I left it. When I tried those cherries, I realized their flavor profile is now more like a supermarket tomato (!), but still I guess it's better than nothing.

Clearing out his very productive SunGold

We turned over some dirt and got ready for our winter crops. My son got very excited about clearing his area and planting new seeds, so we did that even though rain is lurking in the forecast. Hopefully our seeds have enough protection from their straw mulch topping to not get washed away. We planted lettuce, cilantro, beets, and carrot seeds. Yeeeaahhh four season planting!

He wouldn't let anyone else touch his area!

My daughter got overly invested in harvesting some carrots - when I pull out one to gauge the crop's progress, she takes it as an invitation to pull as many as she can hold in one hand. Now the menu plan will need to incorporate carrots... lots of carrots. My cilantro is also looking healthy and happy so I need to cook some curries that will use it up. Admittedly some of my cilantro crop always goes to seed before I get to it, but I'm less bugged by that then when I used to buy a bunch of it at the store, use a quarter of it, and then the rest of it would rot in the crisper for a week.

Fall Planting

"Can I do the carrots, Mommy?"

Today is the first sunny day this week - and ironically enough, it's time for fall planting. "Assisted" by my three year old, I cleared a spot that hasn't been planted in a couple seasons (due to the previous bamboo problems). I dug in some new soil additives. My kid enjoyed mixing the two kinds of dirt together. Then we sowed beet, carrot, lettuce, and cilantro seeds. I'd like to do favas, but I don't have the space right now.

I haven't found a good plant marker I like. Or should I say, one I can put in the ground that my kids won't move. So today I just scribbled in chalk on the fence what was in each row. My daughter added some art to my notes. That should get us over the forgetfulness hump until (if) the rainy season, by which time something identifiable had better be coming up there!

Planting in the Moment

Outstanding in her field.

I went outside with my daughter yesterday afternoon on a beautiful sunny day. My intent was to pick a few peas, water, and call it a day, but when we got out there, she looked around and said, "Why don't we do some planting?" Indeed. So we (I) turned over a patch that most recently had done nothing for some allium seeds, and we put in the carrot and beet seeds I got at the dollar store. Fingers crossed. (That basically sums up my whole gardening philosophy.)

Winter Gardening

Positioning the marker just so in the pot

After my last post, I fully expected to stay indoors for a couple months. Then my gaze fell on my in-box, and on the radish seeds someone gave my daughter for her November birthday. "Come on kids!" I shouted. "Let's go plant these radishes real quick!"

"Okay!" responded my 5 year old son enthusastically. "And carrots too! They're a winter crop!"

Well. Can't argue with his garden savvy or his gusto, so the three of us spent an hour in the vegetable garden this afternoon. It was in the low 60s, I'd say, a welcome respite from the recent "bitter" (by Bay Area standards) cold. We planted radishes in a pot, and in the ground cilantro, mesclun, beets, and carrots, all from seed. I pulled out my sad, sad plants formerly known as tomatoes, clicked my tongue over my peas, and weeded. Grr. Also tried to redirect some sneaky bamboo, grr x 1000.

Any excuse to practice those kindergarten writing skills

The kids spent their time messing around with the seed packets and decorating plant markers (craft sticks). That was actually a good use of their time, as opposed to having them sow the actual seeds with me, which is a great way to have your lettuce row sprout a big ol' cilantro in the middle. It will be handy to have a visual marker of what went where, since my memory is obviously deteriorating rapidly.

I think the Vitamin D did us all good. Whether we'll reap anything more tangible, time will tell.

Of COURSE you need to bring out about 50 craft sticks to choose from. All the markers too. You never know what you'll need.

Our Garden is Beautiful

My 2 y.o. and I spent some time this morning gardening together. No matter how little I feel like gardening, or how little I'm looking forward to the drudgery of winter gardening, just getting out there and doing it with a little helper puttering nearby is sweet. Bonus: It leaves me with an (undoubtedly illusory) feeling of accomplishment. Today, after I turned over a patch about 4'x4', she and I planted cilantro, beets, carrots, and "Salad Bowl" lettuce (the latter in ground as well as in a pot that I had just yanked basil from - call it an experiment). I enhanced the soil with some of my special Recycling Center compost; fingers crossed. I pulled out the basil (sniff; it was so good to me this year) and a Roma tomato. I showed the baby how to break up soil clumps with her little shovel, and she trotted after me when I took things out to the green waste. We picked a few golden cherries and took a break to munch them. And when we were done, she wiped her hands on her jeans and announced, "Our garden is beautiful!"

I had to agree.