Island Mama

The last couple of weekends have been busy with planting. We got in our brassica seeds (cauliflower, broccoli, Brussel sprouts) and root vegetables (carrots and parsnips, turnips and rutabagas), things we’ll be hoping to eat in the fall and into winter.

And now that it’s June, it’s finally time to set out the tomato and pepper starts and put in the stuff that needs warmer weather to germinate, things like corn and beans and pumpkins and summer and winter squashes. We have a whole large bed for the “sprawly” things, the pole beans and squashes that would take over our standard beds, and a whole bed for corn, as much to amuse the kids as anything else (not sure how well it’ll do in our climate).

I created this Bean Teepee out of branches from an alder tree we cut down earlier in the spring. Tied them all together with twine and planted multi-colored bean seeds along two sides of it. Hopefully in the height of summer, the kids will be able to crawl into a lush beany refuge and hide. And snack on fresh green, purple and yellow beans.

The two sides of this bed leading away from the teepee are each planted with a row of super tall sunflowers, so it should be pretty, too. And behind that, the rest of the bed is more bean tripods and 9 hills for pumpkins and squashes.

Of course, the problem with some of these most recent seeds are that the birds love them. So we tried to get creative on ways to scare them off. The bean tripods are now decorated with blank CDs. They twirl and sway in the wind, creating dancing reflections and shadows which hopefully the birds will hate.

And then there’s the corn. Using foil for “shiny” and contact paper for strength, I cut spirals like this. Then tied them onto a bunch more of those alder branches and stuck them in the ground throughout the corn bed.

We’re going to be adding a scarecrow just for the fun of making him…. but more on that later.

Growth has been happening at a crazy pace out there. During the week we were gone, it seemed like everything just exploded. And in the two weeks since we returned, even more so!

Before we left:

April-planted potatoes; salad beds 1 and 2 (planted three weeks apart).

Salad bed 1, for scale.

The day we got back:

April-planted potatoes; salad beds 1 and 2 (planted three weeks apart).

One week later (weekend before last):

The early-planted half of the garden: potatoes, peas, salads, fava beans, kale and chard.

And now:

April-planted potatoes, newly-trellised peas.

It’s May 1st, today we enjoyed our first garden salad of the season. A lettuce blend, baby spinach, baby chard, overwintered arugula, thinnings of early Walla Walla onions, and baby radishes.

It was good.

I’m thrilled to be starting to eat from our garden, and excited to know this is just the beginning!

Just for comparison to the last post… scale pictures of the salad stuff before I harvested:

The garden is growing! Despite the wacky weather we’ve been having, our salad mix and spinach are going to be providing us with our first (admittedly very small) salad of the season in a week or two!

The peas are coming on nicely too.

We also have fava beans, chard, kale (that was overwintered), onions, radishes, and potatoes planted. The potatoes are the only ones not doing anything yet.

Soon we’ll be planting some more of the long season stuff, and then we’ll be planting warm-weather crops: tomatoes and corn and zucchini and things. The salad and spinach we’ll be planting more of every few weeks, so we have a fresh supply all summer long.

Pink. And flowery.

I love ‘em.

I guess I’m getting more girly in reaction to all the boys in the house.

There’s this hole in the concrete patio. We have no idea why it’s there, how long it’s been there, if it was for a reason or due to an accident. It was there when we moved in.

I keep wanting to fill it in. But then we wonder if it’s useful in some way.

Certainly, it’s fun.

And messy. It’s just down-slope from the outside water faucet, so even if it hasn’t been raining, it is often filled with water.

Yes, he has shoes on. And is standing shoe-deep in the water.

And boys will play in it. Drop things in it. Stand in it. Splash in it. And even (and this is what convinces me we need to fill it in) try to drink from it. Timothy, with a sandpit shovel, tries to scoop up water and mud and feed it to himself. I know he’s working on using utensils, but I’d really rather he kept it to the table. And, you know, preferably food.