The Reapers

My oh my, what a rewarding adventure this has been so far. Not a day - or meal - goes by that we don't recognize our good fortunes in having been open to the opportunity to build and tend this project. Seven months ago, we were your average urban consumers of all things store bought (and grown where and how?!).

Peas GALORE!

The last month has been abundantly overflowing with tasty rewards in the forms of the Lacinato kale, broccoli, golden beets, sage, spinach and Green Arrow shell peas. The carrots have formed a beautiful, dense canopy to cool their burrows, but aren't quite ready to show their lengths above ground; the onions are fattening up nicely; the Sugar Ann snap peas are still showing up in our salads but we can tell they've about run their course; and the Honey Butternut squashes have just barely begun to flower, so we'll be keeping a close eye on them.

A Carrot Canopy

Did we mention that 200+ square feet of raised beds just wasn't enough for us? Well, we decided we wanted to try a little something on our east facing patio that gets some pretty darn good morning sun. A few months ago, J and I were strolling down the street and found about ten or so of these great planters left for the taking outside of one of our local flower shops, Oop's A-Daisy. We're now host and hostess to a Stevia plant, chamomile, peppermint & spearmint, a couple kale plants, some Red Barron onions, and a view obstructing bush of soon to be cherry tomatoes. If you think you don't have anywhere or way to grow, I bet we could help you figure something out :)

Yesterday was a good one to enjoy the afternoon shade with a sweet iced tea, a fresh bag of organic potting soil (E. B. Stone's for flowers & veggies), and our new seed packets littering the little space left on our patio...

                  Summer's All-Organic Line-Up:
Yellow Straight-neck Squash
                    Tavor (globe) Artichoke
      Sweet Pearl Corn
                                 Florence Fennel
                Finger Eggplant
   Green Finger Cucumber
                            (More) Golden Beets
                                                        (More) Red Barron Onion

All of the above are ruminating over germinating as you read, and a few others are to be direct sown as soon as some of the old tenants have moved out of their beds.

Our Current Quandaries
A couple things we're pondering are how to save the seeds of our current harvest and what to do with all the worm tea we've got. J's been so good at feeding those squirmy little ingesting machines that we've got quite a bit of it - but how much water to dilute it with and how to apply; now those are our questions...

 

 

 

Our garden sanctuary

So grateful we are to live in a time when all we have to do is "search" and we find everything we need.