June 9, 2015

The blasted rain still hasn't let up. The mornings are beautiful and sunny, but by lunchtime it's cloudy with rain soon to follow. 

Our new tomato plants are struggling. We haven't had enough sun to make them happy. So we don't have high hopes for them unless the weather pattern changes. Gee, I thought we were suppose to be in an El Niño! The eggplant and pepper plants look terrible. So we yanked them out. Time to try growing replacements.

The older sprouting broccoli is still producing small florets, though the plants are starting to look over mature, the younger broccoli looks super. 

So does the young cabbage. 

The spinach is starting to bolt, but it still is tender and lushly green. Must be because of all the rain. The garlic chives that we drastically cut back due to bugs is now growing well. It's about 10" high already. The chard looks like it's swallowing steroids! It apparently loves the wet, cloudy afternoons. 

We harvested potatoes today, a variety called Purple Majesty. They are real dark purple. And it's a great producing variety for our location. 

Here's today's harvest, not including the greens (kale, chard, spinach, broccoli greens, herbs). 

Today's lunch was made from the excess from last week's harvest. Pumpkin soup with chunky vegetables (pipinola, green onions, chives, carrots, broccoli). It was delish! 

End of May + June 2

Boy, we've been getting a lot of rain recently. Not so much large volumes at any one time, but something just about every night. It's been a hard few months trying to grow certain vegetables. But the greens, spring onions, and potatoes are thriving still. 

So what's still growing well for us? Potatoes. Sweet potatoes. Beets. Chard. Kale. Broccoli. Cabbage. Turnips. Radishes. Green onions. Chives. Basil. Beans. Taro. Spinach. Carrots.

What's doing poorly? Cowpeas. Tomatoes. Eggplant. Peppers. Peas, because of disease. The pipinola aren't doing poorly, but they aren't doing great either. 

But we are still getting harvests. 

The harvest above doesn't show the greens because people pick what they want of the kale, chard, spinach, and herbs. 

We had a bag full of tangerines given to us this week,  they also were shared among the volunteers. They turned out to be quite juicy and sweet. 

Many, many weeks ago Matt started onions from seeds. Several weeks went by and we finally planted them out into the garden....just wee thin seedlings that we planted in clumps rather than try separating them. Finally this week we began separating the onions and replanting them. 

We know from prior experience that these newly transplanted seedlings will grow very rapidly. It not be long before we are harvesting green onions.