Gardening

This is the first summer that we have tried red cabbage.  The cabbages and our lettuces have been covered in slugs looking for a meal.  I have been going out with a flashlight in the evening when they come out to pick them off.  With all the vacations and time away, I needed more tricks.  I decided to make beer slug traps, which after only a couple days caught several dozen slugs and a bunch of earwigs. I refined the design with some larger openings and added a couple more and they worked pretty well.  It seems like a ton of work for a couple cabbages.  I think next summer it makes sense to rotate through different quick lettuces and greens.

The garden had a couple extra spaces where squirrels (and those darn bunnies) have eaten new plants, so I planted a sweet mesclun mix and baby leaf spinach from seed.  You can never have too much in the lettuces realm- they are so easy to grow and grow anywhere.  The romaine plants that we planted earlier in the summer has already yielded it’s first round and it really only seems to last a second time after the first harvest, we will be done with those plants in a couple more weeks.  I have seedlings of romaine that I planted about 2 and 1/2 weeks ago, so those are going to ready to eat in a couple weeks- hopefully this will line up around the time the first plants are spent.  I should be covered for the next month or so with what I have at this point, but I wanted to be prepared for the month after.  It was my biggest mistake to not spread out the lettuces all summer- last summer I planted everything at the beginning of the summer and then we choked on lettuce once or twice midsummer, then were without lettuce the rest of the summer.  I am hoping that the new plan yeilds salad greens for the rest of the summer.  I have enough seeds for a few more rounds- I bought some spicy mesclun seeds (mix) and swiss chard and then some more romaine and a “gourmet” lettuce mix, so we should be set. I am going to try planting new seeds every two weeks and see how that works.

The kids like spinach, “spring mix” and romaine the most.  Our oldest really is more adventurous, so will usually dive right in without much coaxing. Our son likes to dip most things in ketchup or occasionally the dressing that we have on the table (if it isn’t a ketchup meal)… so… um… gross… but if he eats his spinach, then… we say go for it!

Our second year of four larger raised beds has been planted.  I am still so proud of our raised beds.  I saw plans for them online, but build them myself last year out of cedar and topped the corner posts with copper fence toppers.  I sealed the beds again this Spring before I planted.

We have done a lot of research last summer regarding gardening by the foot- which shoves things a little closer and more symmetrically than I would normally tend to do.  We also like the garden to look nice, since it is front and center in  our back yard, so that increased the importance of nice beds and incorporating plants for visual appeal- even if we aren’t going to really eat them.

Our plan for the garden is as follows:

The chives and oregano came back this year.  The mint didn’t, which we have a big pot on the patio.  It came back when we had it in the garden, but the pot must have gotten too cold?  Our daughter planted seeds at her school, so we got lots of small seedlings for the garden this year.  We are trying onions for the first time- tons of them and sticking with our tendency to go really heavy on the tomatoes- since we love them so much.  This year we also went heavy on the basil, since we never seem to have enough.  We are also doing a lot of lettuce, since that is always a favorite.  We didn’t really have much luck last year with cauliflower, broccoli and chinese cabbages.  We tried red cabbage in it’s place- a new plant for us.  We are also doing more peas than beans this year because peas as so good for you and delicious too.  Last year too the tomatoes got huge, so they choked out things in their shadow.  We may have helped with this by planting things that are early summer to the north of them.  We can always plant more lettuces too if something doesn’t get enough sun- that is if lettuces will sprout for us in those areas.

One other thing that we are sort of sad to be lacking this year is cucumbers, zucchini and yellow squash.  We had some awesome crops last year, but the vines took over the yard and killed a ton of grass… and with a small yard- we decided to avoid things that spread our horizontally.

Goals for our summer garden:

Eat everything that we grow.

Grow things that we know we will eat- rather than purely experiment.

Spread out the harvest throughout the summer- so that we have both early and late harvested food.