It is raining as I write this, but yet I ran outside to snap a few pictures. As the first half of the year begins its final day, July sweeping into view ahead, the vegetable garden has in ten days evolved into a proper patch.
Two weeks more of on-again off-again rain and sunshine has definitely helped. And as things settle into this splendid spread of virtually weed-free gardening bliss I start to look at the nuance of possible risks approaching.
Fearing to jinx myself, I’ve been watching the forecast for some kind of terrible storm. In July we are often cursed with at least one helluva-hail-storm where one unlucky quadrant of the city is pummelled by frozen pellets from the sky. That happened once about five years ago and it literally pulped what had been a fantastic vegetable garden into a mess of compost. Broke my heart, to be honest.
So, that has become a lingering fear that, pragmatically if it happens it happens, but would crush my soul a little bit more if it did.
On the other side of that fear is a blossoming collection of amazing future salads.
The carrots are bushy and strong.
The lettuce is at that phase where we actually think we might better start eating it now else it risks running away and getting ahead of our capacity to harvest it.
The peas are proper tall and I expect in the next couple weeks will start blossoming and producing some fruit.
The cukes have established themselves and by next time I write I expect I’ll have needed to start tending where their vines are growing as I loop them back in on themselves and try to contain them to the small space I’ve allocated.
And I can’t even talk about how unexpected my garlic crop is pleasing me. I don’t even know how we’re going to use it all.
Don’t call it cheating, but I made a rare trip to the store shortly after my last post with a shopping list exactly two items long: some ant powder to deal with the infestation in our front yard and a couple of hostas to replace two dead shrubs in the back. I had visited a couple of greenhouses in May to seek out some starter tomatoes and such, but due to the pandemic seedlings were in short supply. Yet as I entered the checkout lane, there as one of the lane barriers was an entire rack full of tomatoes and other little starters.
Needless to say my list got a little longer than two items as I picked up a trio of tomatoes, some spicy peppers, and a couple small flats of leafy greens, specifically some kale and bok choy — things I never would grow from seed — to fill in the spaces where nothing ever really germinated. Those have eagerly joined the garden patch and are faring well… ish. More on that in a later post I hope.