Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Underway

The spring has, at last, settled in. AMEN.

Well, because of Ms. Virginia's arrival, gardening isn't the same leisurely activity that it once was. Even getting the seeds started is something of a race against time--not so much against the warming temperatures, but against the astonishing backlog of household chores and necessities. The taxes must be calculated, the leaves raked, and the clothes sent off to Goodwill.


The tomatoes, however, have been hatched, and all but one of the pods is boasting fresh life. We're ten days away from the time we planted the seeds, and they seem to be doing well. The secondary leaves are just beginning show, though the stems seem a little on the leggy side. In another week or two, we'll start one of my least favorite process: the Thinning.


The Thinning. There comes a point where only one plant is allowed in each pod. You (well, I--Camille always seems to be busy) have to go in with a pair of scissors and snip away at the weaker plant. As someone who has never been tall, I always have a tough time with this, and I inevitably allow one or two of the smaller guys to prevail.

Anyway, this is where we are in our planting. A lot of the other seeds are going to be planted directly in the ground.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Garlic Discoveries

So this was fun: I entered a garlic recipe contest sponsored by NPR. My recipe for crab cakes was chosen in the top three, and they featured the recipe on the site.

After listening to the original program, I assumed that all the recipes had to have green garlic, which I'd never used before. I'd put scapes into my crabcakes, so I thought they might work. Serendipitous to the entry, I found a whole patch of green garlic in last year's site! So now we don't worry about "wasting" our precious crop.

Our regular garlic has done fabulously this year -- it's already four inches high. This morning I put compost all around the plants and then planted lettuce in between.

Beets go in today too. It's a gorgeous sunny cool day -- and we have a kite to fly later today!
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Thursday, April 2, 2009

Horse, Of Course



The top photo is the organic horse manure compost we bought from a local(ish) farmer. It's chunky, but smells great (meaning has very little horse smell). The bottom photo is the compost after we ran the rototiller through it. We changed farmers this year because the stuff last year was pretty woody -- although, admittedly, it did work great.