Our first cauliflower of the season

We have purple and gold cauliflower blossoming in our garden this week. (We got the color pack when we planted in November.)

Nearly a week of sunshine has made everything grow big. Besides the cauliflower, the lettuces are thriving along with the spinach. The brussels sprout plants keep getting larger and larger -- keeping pace with the cauliflower plants -- but there's no signs of sprout stems.

The red Swiss chard is coming along. It's still small and slow, but seems healthy.

There's not much work to be done at this point. Mother Nature has kept a nice pace of rain so there's no watering to be done. The break in the rain and the arrival of sun means that weeds are starting to thrive, but not so much that we can't easily keep them under control. There are bug holes in the lower leaves of our lettuces, but not so severe that we're inclined to break out the organic bug spray.

The basil plants are no longer thriving. We've had temperatures in the low 30s, so that probably hasn't done much for them, but they had exceeded their season by several months at this point.

Comments

Hand-Knit Trellis Now Ready for Climbing Foot-Long Beans

Just as the "June" gloom is starting to burn off, I finished my knitted trellis for the garden. It completely surrounds one of our bamboo tripods, with space at the bottom for tending the romaine lettuces growing within the tripod. It's knit out of nylon twine on US 35 needles. While the nylon has no stretch (the way a wool yarn does), the huge gauge has loads of give. The piece was knit flat with ties attached along one edge. It is tied to the tripod along one leg. One some early samples for a knitted plant trellis, I experimented with lace patterns. They look lovely, but I realized two things. One, once the plants grow up the trellis any knitting pattern is lost. Secondly, the plants and leaves need space to grow in and out of. I used a pattern for a shawl: k1, yo, k2tog and then repeat. I got lost a number of times: the yarn-overs drifted over other stitches on occasion. As this was a speed project that won't be visible ones the beans grow over it, I didn

Know Your Soil For Best Garden Results

I've always taken soil for granted. It was there. You put seeds into it. You put water on it. Plants grow and produce flowers, fruit or vegetables. Gayle Weinstein, author of Xeriscape Handbook; A How-To Guide to Natural, Resource-Wise Gardening , takes a different view: “Soil . . . acts as a highway between life and death, land and atmosphere, plants and animals.” It stores water, air and nutrients and makes it possible for an exchange of elements and chemical reactions to occur, she adds. She describes soil as being animal, vegetable and mineral combined. Here are six tests Gayle recommends for getting to know your soil. Grab a shovel and a quart jar. Dig up two cups of dry soil two-to-six inches deep from the areas you want to test. Gather a glass of water, dish washing detergent and paper towels. A soil pH kit, a meter or litmus paper will be needed for the final test.

Bug Hotels: Hospitality for Gardens

The first time I ever saw a bug hotel was in the yard of my nephew's house. His wife, Kay, is one of the best urban homesteaders I've ever met. Her bug hotel was about the size of a Victorian doll house, had a moss roof and was work of art. I was enchanted. A bug house (or hotel) provides winter habitat for beneficial insects who, in turn, swarm awake in the spring, lay eggs and sweep your organic garden clear of aphids and mites. That's the theory anyway. "I first learned about bug/pollinator houses when taking a hike at a preserve, " Kay said. "They had a huge bug house on display. It was really like a functional piece of artwork." Although she always wanted to create one, it wasn't until some neighbors started complaining about carpenter bees and discussing sprays to kill them that she decided to get to work. Other neighbors, who were advocates for pollinators and native plants and had made their farm a pollinator haven, served as inspiration. W

The Fink Farm Dirt

Search This Blog