A Gardener's Retreat

So many things are on the verge.  There are blooming beans and blooming zucchini and tiny green tomatoes on the vine.  Our carrots are growing underground while nearby the cabbages look like giant purple roses as they start to take shape.  The cucumbers are proving to be a bit slow this year but I think in two weeks we’ll be pickling cukes.  And our red lettuces (from the second crop of seeds that we thinned and transplanted) are looking fine and almost ready to start eating.  I hope the buttercrunch (a few weeks behind) do as well.

As our plants grow and make fruit, the grasses likewise grow. They grew between and among each carrot plant, throughout the lettuce beds, the cucumber and squash patch, and all around the herbs.  They grew abundantly despite the fact that I had just fully weeded those beds a few weeks before.  Grass is inexorable — it has great life spirit.  Says Ray Bradbury in Dandelion Wine:

“It was this then, the mystery of man seizing from the land and the land seizing back, year after year, that drew Douglas, knowing the towns never really won, they merely existed in calm peril, fully accoutered with lawn mower, bug spray and hedge shears, swimming steadily as long as civilization said to swim, but each house ready to sink in green tides, buried forever, when the last man ceased and his trowels and mowers shattered to cereal flakes of rust.”

That said, we play our role in the annual battle between man and grass.  We weed.  I have learned that the best way to pull a grass plant from the ground (a little one, that is) is to grasp the stem firmly but gently and gently pull it out, roots and all.  This method feels slow but as soon as you speed up, you succeed only in ripping off their tops leaving roots intact and ready to send up more shoots.  So slow and steady wins the race with grass weeding.  And the result — weed-free beds with plenty of room for our vegetables to grow.

Knee-high by July

We went over to the Community Garden today to take advantage of the weather and plant some seeds and starts. I had on my calendar to plant cabbage, kale and arugula around this time, and since there’s rain in the forecast, it seemed perfect.

We got our starts out at Walkers over the weekend – 6 cabbages, 6 parsley and a thyme plant.  I also had a bunch of kale seeds left over from last year, a Russian Red as I recall, and some more of that wild arugula.  

Once out at the garden, we realized that there was a lot to access.  Although at first glance, most plants seemed small, there was more action than we expected.  We have a full bed of peas, with seedlings around 4 inches high on average.  The lettuces, which seemed non-existent, are just small. I planted more red romaine to supplement.

On the more robust side, the spicy mesclun are doing great (planted more of them too) and the radishes getting appreciably bigger.  In between, there’s a nice carrot crop coming up, a lot more than I expected.  We’ll still have to replant a few patches but overall it’s looking good. 

Chris did a lot of work on the B&J plot north of us and it’s all over but the sifting for grass roots.  The turf is out.  This is great timing because we want to plant it in two weeks.  I guess we’ll be out there this weekend, weeding and prepping.

A final word on our herb bed which has been going for several years.  Although the echinacea are not as vigorous as I’d like, the chives are huge, and it looks like the lavender and sage are growing in really well after having been cut back almost to the ground last fall.  The thyme plant, which is small but tall, will keep them company.  Meanwhile, the chamomile Nancy gave us is starting to look comfortable — I hope it does well.  It makes the sweetest tea.