Note to self

Self -

You know that ecinachea plant you put in the front row of the perennial garden to keep the deer out of the rest of the garden? Well, it's getting eaten by the deer (even though it's deer "resistant") and it's WAY too big to be in the front of the garden. In the fall, move it to the spot formerly occupied by the artemisia (the one Brynn killed with gasoline) and put a catmint in the ecinachea's spot. The deer don't touch that and it's lower growing. Also, move the second ecinachea back to the spot formerly occupied by the now dead (for no good reason) coreopsis and find something new to stick in its spot, too. Maybe a low-growing agastache.

Don't forget.

Lovingly,
Hillary

PS: Remember to look into getting a hedge trimmer to shear back the catmint and shape the boxwoods.

Spinach bolted.

Oops...I waited too long. I ended up harvesting (and composting a lot of) the spinach two days ago. Most of it had bolted. Some of it was still edible, but about a third of it went straight to the composter. Ugh! Next year I'm going to try planting Bloomsdale Spinach and see how it does. Whatever variety I planted this year was lame. Tiny leaves, took forever to germinate...not good.

I'm still waiting to see if I'm going to get any broccoli or brussel sprouts, too. The plants are huge, but there's nothing resembling brussel sprouts or broccoli attached to the leaves. Not sure how that's supposed to work since I've never grown them before. The carrots and parsnips seem to be growing well, as is the cilantro. The basil's kind of sorry, but I think it will get better in the next week or so. The tomatoes have lots of flowers and a few have actual green tomatoes -- a good sign, I think.

We got a bunch of lettuce and spinach in our CSA box this week, so we'll be having salads for dinner for the next few days. We've eaten about half of the lettuce out of our garden and it was great. Alice Waters talks about how wonderful lettuce is when it's still practically alive. She's right. Crispy and sweet...yum.

My first harvest

I was out of town over the weekend, and when I arrived home on Sunday afternoon, I went to the garden to take a peek. Much to my surprise, I found that at least half of my bok choy had bolted, meaning that it had gone to seed. This was despite the fact that each plant was less than a third of the size that I expected them to be. Seeing that it wasn't going to get any bigger, I planned to make stir fry out of most of it for dinner tonight. The stir fry was tasty, but what was most satisfying was seeing the gorgeous color of the bok choy in the colander as I rinsed it this afternoon.

Unfortunately, my strawberry plants aren't producing much of anything. Lots of flowers, no fruit. I was planning to put netting over the strawberries to keep the birds off, but there doesn't seem to be a need for it. The tomatoes are growing well and adding more flowers every day. My two bell pepper plants, on the other hand, don't seem to have added a centimeter to their height since Mother's Day when I put them in the ground. Since they're only about eight inches tall, I'm not expecting much from them this season. The carrots and parsnips seem to be growing well, as are the spinach, broccoli, and brussel sprouts. I can see little sprouts from the red onions, but I'm not sure if anything's growing under the soil. The green onions never germinated, nor did the edamame, so I've put in more spinach in those spots since that's what we eat most of the time anyway.

Here are some photos of what else is going on in the garden:

Most of Brynn's snap peas are tall enough to reach their support net.

The spinach hasn't grown much in the past few days. I'm nervous
that it might be getting too hot and it could bolt soon, too.
At least we love baby spinach!

The broccoli plants are growing like crazy, but nothing
resembling broccoli seems to be growing yet.

Here's a view of the whole sideyard from the gate nearest our driveway. The veggie garden is in the sections on the right. I love the creeping veronica that lines the edges. The blue flowers are spectacular mid-day.Too bad they're not edible, since they're the only thing really flourishing right now.

Closeup of the creeping veronica.

Brynn enjoying the purple flowers.