A Gardener's Retreat

For us, the highlight of the season is Tomato Planting Day.  Once last frost is over with, we get antsy.  So we took advantage of good weather this weekend to buy all our starts and set them out in the plot there.  It was great fun.

We bought all our plants at Walker Farm and only splurged a little.  We got a six pack each of basil,  mixed hot peppers (jalapeno, paprika, ancho, habanero, and our personal favorites, cherry bomb) and marigolds.  As for tomatoes, it’s hard to remember what we got exactly but I know Purple Calabash was one, as well as Old Brooks, a marbled yellow and pink number, and another pink eating tomato.  For cherry tomatoes, we got Sweet 100 because that’s what they had.

Once out at the plot, we had a lot of work to do watering, prepping, weeding, manuring and all the rest.  It was another marathon (by our standards) of around 3 hours.  When we were done, we had all the summer vegetables in the ground.  

As for everything else, our results remain mixed.  Going around the seed beds, the beans are up! the mesclun is starting to shoot to flower, there are three more kale seedlings than there were before (after reseeding), the second crop of radishes are up and it looks like some of the reseeded carrots are too, the eating cucumbers are up but the pickling cukes are not, the pattypan squashes are just getting started, and the lettuces remain pathetic.

If we’ve had one big crop so far this year, it’s radishes, which we always hope will be the case.  This year, as some readers may remember, I planted half brand new seed (Easter Egg Mix) and half mixed bag old seed.  I got great results from the new seed and very small radishes if any out of the old seed.  But yesterday was the big bonanza — I brought home at least 25 radishes, some quite large and globular.  We ate a bunch in salad last night and they were positively juicy, as well as spicy and sweet.  I’m not sure if there are any health bennies to radishes but I felt healthy eating them.

Now we’re just sitting back and hoping for rain.  If the current forecast is any indication, we’re bound to get lucky one of the next three days…