Learning from Mistakes

Last fall, K and I planted a bed of garlic. We also planted salad greens, radishes and beets from seed. We bought a few plants -- broccoli, mustard, and collards and stuck them in. We knew that, except for the garlic, we were planting too late, but we felt like mucking around in the dirt, so we thought we'd give it a try. I pretty much ignored everything all winter. I weeded the garlic bed a couple times. K religiously watered all the plants with worm tea all winter.

The beets and radishes sprouted, but never, ever developed into anything worth even talking about. The salad mix came up, but then seemed to just kind of hold its breath all winter. The collards, broccoli and mustard did nothing all winter. They neither grew nor died. Until we started having some warm February days. By the end of February, we had a lush 3 X 4 ft bed of baby salad greens (and reds) and strong, healthy looking collards and mustard. The broccoli budded in early March -- nothing spectacular, but we had omelets with broccoli one night.

Now, every day, I walk out to the garden and cut a salad. But, you know what? It's hard. Something in my nature makes me want to conserve, to be careful with this bed of greens. Last summer's garden produced a moderate amount of potatoes: Peruvian purple fingerlings and Yukon Golds. We ate sparingly all late summer and fall. However, we don't have a root cellar here. We had no way of storing those potatoes for winter, yet we tried. The result was a big mess in the potato bin. We missed out on the glory of our summer potatoes. We should have been reveling in those potatoes all summer and fall.

I read once that in France, when asparagus begins to be in season, they have festivals celebrating it and eat very little besides asparagus at every meal. I'm trying to celebrate my salad with that spirit.

Transplanting update:

Tomatoes, artichokes and tomatillos have been transplanted into larger pots with a mixture of coir, worm compost and potting soil. K has finished the A frame growing light contraption, but has yet to bring it up from the basement.

I ordered Yukon Gold potatoes and a red potato from Seeds of Change. Also, I ordered sweet potato slips from Henry Field (Bush Porto Rico) and That's Delicious corn. Usually I grow mostly heirlooms, but I thought a super sweet corn would be fun.

Weeding and Seeding

I finally got around to pulling up a few weeds in the garlic bed today. It isn't a huge bed. I planted 110 cloves of Inchelium Red, some other variety whose name I forgot (this is why I need a garden journal), and a few cloves from the Publix to fill out the bed. The bed was double-dug by K and enriched with compost, manure, and worm poop from our kitchen worm farm. Then I put what I thought was a pretty heavy mulch of wheat straw down. The garlic started pushing up in December, but all the literature I read said that was ok. However, what with working nights, being a new nurse, winter, and just general laziness, I haven't been out to the garlic patch much since. Garlic doesn't like to compete. I've not only read this, but I've lost an entire bed of garlic in the past because of winter-laziness-lack-of-weeding.

Even more exciting than weeding: I ordered seeds today from Baker's Creek.

Tomatoes:

Tappy's Heritage
Black Cherry
Dr. Wyche's Orange
Ananas Noir

Hill Country Red Okra

Tomatillo

Golden Midget Watermelon

Flat Egyptian Beets

Rosa Bianca (or is it Blanca?) Eggplant

Helios Radish

Purple Artichoke

Some butterhead lettuce whose name I can't recall

I'm recreating this list from memory because I'm in bed in a dark room with The Real Housewives of Orange County on the television -- I'm on call -- and yes, I do feel dirty. Although Baker Creek is my favorite seed source, sometimes I wonder if it isn't also written (or at least edited) in bed in a darkened room by someone also secretly watching some really trashy television. It has typos (but not too many) and sometimes will call a particular variety by one name on one page and a slightly different one on another page. But it is still my all time favorite lie-in-a-hot-bath-in-January-and-look-at-pictures-of-exotic-veggies-I-could-plant-in-the-spring-catalog.