Garden Update: Salad Days
When we were last in the garden together, it was June 9 so high time for an update. I wasn’t all that optimistic a month ago as the seedlings that had struggled (see Starting the Garden, June 9, 2018 ) continued to be listless for a long time, then BLAMMO; the garden really took off.
As much as I love being in the garden and munching on its bounty, there’s no way around the fact that it takes a lot of time. I would estimate I’m out there 8-12 hours a week, plus time in the kitchen cleaning and preparing whatever I’m bringing in. And sometimes there are things out there that just won’t wait and time must be found, so other things are put aside; I haven’t cleaned my apartment in three weeks and my next weaving project is part-way on the loom but hasn’t been touched since July 4th.
I have been eating a lot of salad, having planted six heads each of red-leaf, romaine, and butter lettuces. It is pretty satisfying to go to the backyard and pluck enough leaves to make lunch. The nasturtiums and borage are blooming so I add those edible flowers to the mix for a pretty salad: borage tastes cucumber-y and nasturtiums are peppery like arugula.
This means significant amounts of lettuce to be processed at one time. Last week, I had five heads of butter leaf, and it took a long time to wash and spin-dry. I had a seen a large salad spinner on a restaurant supply store site and knew that it would come in handy for this end-of-season clearing out as well as processing the kale and Swiss chard that awaits in the fall. It’s massive.
We had a nasty heat wave the first week in July in the northeastern US that drove us all inside and took a bit of a toll on outdoor plants. I installed a drip line watering system (during the first weekend of the heat wave because I never make it easy on myself) and that has helped a great deal, but it has been very dry and very hot.
By the time we reach midsummer as we have, the lettuce planted in spring usually begins to bolt, or send up its flower stalk to produce seeds. When that happens, the leaves become bitter and not welcome on a plate. Between the heat wave and the date on the calendar, my first round of butter head lettuce gave up the ghost last week and the romaine this week. I may have another few days to a week on the red-leaf.
It also made quick work of the six lettuce heads I had to take care of Sunday. I have a large tub with a colander that fits inside that I use outside with the hose for the initial rinsing to get rid of as much garden dirt as I can. As an apartment dweller, I don’t have a utility sink I can use so I do all the work in my kitchen; getting as much dirt out before getting to the kitchen is really helpful. So salad for lunch this week for me, salad for my upstairs and downstairs neighbors, and some to share at work. I have started the next round of lettuce seeds in my kitchen under grow lights, which should take us through the fall.
While the lettuce is just about done, the cucumbers are climbing madly; the kale and Swiss chard are finally looking like they’re getting in the groove; zucchini is starting to flower; raspberries have been producing a cup at a time; first beans are appearing; tomatoes are flowering and the first fruit is appearing.
On the-jury-is-still-out side, the eggplant and peppers aren’t really taking off; the peas have done very little all spring and the first ones are just appearing but the plants are scraggly and unpromising. The morning glories, sweet peas, and moon flowers I planted to cover an ugly garage wall has had one sweet pea. Someone is eating the basil but there are no Japanese beetles to be seen nor in the trap. To keep the dreaded cucumber beetles at bay, I spray a solution of kaolin clay on the plants that keeps them away, which also seems to work on eggplant flea beetles.
I did get my most recent soil test back and the numbers have changed significantly; there were no exclamation points at all in the report–gratifying indeed. Phosphorus went from 1267 to 42, with the optimum range being 4-14. Magnesium declined from 1355 to 209, with the optimum being 50-120. So still work to be done but on the right track.
The garden is never the same experience twice, and there is always so much to learn from each season. Stay tuned!
