Spring Garden Retrospective - Part Three

On to Bed #3. Early in the year this bed was devoted primarily to saladings. Those have all been cleared out except for the items that I'm collecting seeds from. So for the past couple of months this tunnel has been mostly about chard. It's difficult to see in this photo, but there's just a mish mash of stuff left in the tunnel, except for the chard at the far end which is not clearly visible here.

April 28

Here's the chard a few weeks later, not much different.

May 18

 Not much changed in another 10 days...

May 28

 Other than that a rat found its way in and started to munch on the base of my golden chard plant.

May 28

And my strawberries.

May 28

Two weeks later and the chard is still going strong and the rat was, um, apprehended.

June 11

The Flamingo chard is producing numerous side shoots which I've begun to cut out because it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

June 11

Now that the rat has been tried, convicted, sentenced and has met its fate the strawberries are coming back.

June 11

And I finally got around to sowing a new round of saladings and other greens in the bed.

June 11

That tangle of greenery in the center is Golden Corn Salad going to seed. I never did get a decent bunch of it growing this year and what little did do well was at its prime when I was on vacation. That's ok, I had a surfeit of other greens to use in my salads this spring.

June 11

There's one other thing that came from the tunnel recently, a volunteer Ear of the Devil lettuce. It is so aptly named. It's beautiful, but not one of my favorite lettuces, it tends to turn bitter if allowed to mature too much.

Let's move on to the far end of the bed where you can see the towering carrots in full bloom yesterday.

June 11

Here's that corner earlier in the spring. There are two rounds of carrots coming into bloom. The first round is in the lower right corner of the photo. These were short at this time because they were actually tall and in full bloom last autumn and were knocked down by a freeze in early December. The roots survived and pushed out a bunch of short flower stalks this spring. The rest of the carrots were not blooming last autumn and didn't push up their main flower stalks until this spring, now in June they are full bloom. In the lower left is a patch of Tuscan Arugula that I had harvested once and then they quickly started to bolt, they were all pulled out not long after this photo was taken. Towering behind the Tuscan arugula is a patch of Speedy Arugula in full bloom.

April 28

A couple of weeks later the tall carrots are starting to blossom. Note the trellis behind the carrots. That was supporting peas a long time ago and I kept it in place to support the carrots as they started to reach for the sky.

May 11

I'm not so sure that I'll actually be harvesting the carrot seeds, but for now I can spare the space and am fascinated to watch them bloom and also appreciate their attractiveness to beneficial insects. Did you know that carrot blossoms have a pleasant fragrance?

May 11

A week later and the Speedy Arugula has started to flop all over the place.

May 18

There are LOTS of seed capsules developing.

May 11

Another week and some of the seed capsules appear to be ripening, although the plants are still blooming.

May 18

Remember the trellis? The carrots are nearly as tall as it now, and that's over 5 feet (1.5 meters). I'm really glad I left the trellis in place - you can see where I tied the carrots to it with strips of old t-shirts, they were flopping all over everything. That stake sticking up in the center of the photo is serving to keep the arugula from flopping all over the place also. I had no idea that the arugula would be so incredibly large and floppy. (Note to self, next time I let this stuff go to seed I'll enclose it in a tomato cage.)

June 11

All sorts of stuff blooming here, cilantro/coriander, carrots, arugula, corn salad, and one very dry hillside in the background with suffering oak trees.

June 11

June 11

 Coming around the corner to the tunnel on the other side of the bed.

June 11

I planted far too much lettuce for the spring. By mid April all the fabulous butterhead was gone and the Sweetie Baby romaine was in its prime.

April 28

April 28

Sweetie Baby lives up to its name, its great when it's baby sized and it stays sweet even when it starts to bolt.

May 18

May 18

But by the end of May I had to pull the remaining heads out, even Sweetie Baby has its limits.

May 28

And now that spot is filled with baby beets. These are my favorite varieties - Chioggia, Golden (from Renee's, the best Golden beet I've found so far), and Red Baron. These were started in paper pots. They are now in need of thinning.

June 11

And over here you might see the first sprouts of escarole. I'm trying a new variety that I hope will be suitable for summer growing. I love the name of this one, Bionda A Cuore Pieno, which so far as I can tell means Blond Full Heart. I'll sow some again in the fall for winter harvests.

June 11

The far end of the tunnel was home to the spring crop of beets. I pulled them a few a time as I wanted them.

April 28

By mid May the last of them needed to be harvested and unfortunately I received some unwelcome assistance in that task when a rat discovered how delicious garden fresh beets can be.

May 18

The beets are gone now and in their place are some young Ruby Gem romaine and a couple of Kagraner Sommer butterhead lettuces. The tatty stuff to the left uh, right, is the first planting of peas for peas shoots.

June 11

Here's a little more appetizing look at them earlier in the spring.

April 28

The plants got a bit ratty looking as the season wore on, the oldest leaves would turn brown and there were a few other volunteer things growing in the patch. But the plants keep putting out tasty new shoots.

May 18

Still looking a bit ratty 10 days later, but the interlopers have been weeded out and the peas keep sprouting.

May 28

Even now there's a few shoots in there ready to harvest, probably the last one. Soon I'll be cleaning them out and the neighboring patch and planting something else to put in my salads.

June 11

Back to the other end of the tunnel where the butterhead was growing earlier. This is a patch of Purple Pac Choi, Ruby Streaks Mizuna, and mixed cutting mustards.

April 28

They grow so quickly! I should have been harvesting them at this stage but there was so much else coming out of the garden that I didn't get around to it.

May 18

They didn't need the extra 10 days of growth, boy do these grow quickly at this time of year.

May 28

I harvested most of the Pac Choi and Mizuna not long after taking the photo above but I did not get around to harvesting the mustards.

June 11

I never did get around to taking a good photo of the Romanesco fennel this spring.

And now for the sad story of the Red Fife wheat patch. I doesn't look so bad here.

April 28

It started to show some heads in early May.

May 11

But by mid May it was already looking bad, turning brown and it was barely developing heads.

May 18

By the end of May it looked so bad that I didn't even bother to clear out the other plants that were volunteering in the patch.

May 28

By mid June the most notable thing in there was the bolting volunteer Ear of the Devil Lettuce.

June 3

I think this is why I allow the Ear of the Devil to volunteer around the garden, it's just beautiful, even when it's bolting.

June 11

At least the volunteer cilantro/coriander, poppies, and chamomile are attracting the beneficials to the garden. The project for this weekend is to clean this all out and I'll continue to buy my wheat from someone who can do a better job of growing it. It was a fun experiment.

June 11