Summer Time and the Living Is Easy

Being gone on a river trip in the beginning of June is the best time to leave a garden. All the starts are in place and the seeds have been planted. I was happy to see everything flourishing with only little weeding needed. Nicky was on top of the watering during a few nice days after I left, but fortunately weather last week has been wet and cold, with plenty of moisture for the young plants. Much to my surprise are the oriental greens that stared out so poorly in the seedling mix. They are bountiful and full-grown and very tender. Not only are we eating these greens, we are eating arugula, pac choi, tot soi, radishes, mizuna, and tomatoes from our indoor plants for dinner every night.




The last few days have been spent mowing, and gathering valuable lawn clippings for compost and mulch. This year, I am mulching more areas than in the past (http://www.savvygardener.com/Features/mulch.html). I decided to mulch the entire hoop house, because the soil can become dry on hot days. This also helps keep the weeds down. As I pull the oriental greens out of the hoop house I will plant carrots in their place, they like the warmth now and can stand the cold later in the year.

Walking trails of grass clippings are great along the strawberry patch. Notice the PVC hoops that will be used later in the season to prevent the sparrows from eating the berries.

The compost has been cooking for the last few days. It is great to see the steam rising from the perforated pipe that runs the length of the primary composter.


We are impressed with the tomatoes this year, they like the new green house addition. I was busy pruning and clipping suckers the day after I got back.

Even though today is the summer solstice and our hours of daylight begin to decline, it is still important to continue to plant. Today I planted beets where there were holes among the first seedlings. They will have plenty of time to grow, given the 60 days to harvest, which will equate to the last part of August. I also planted more cilantro, romaine, bunching onions, and pac choi. Tomorrow I will be planting more romaine, nasturium, and pac choi starts. By only planting four of these plants at a time using the soil blocker I always have room in the garden now as I am harvesting daily.

A fun green this past week is miners lettuce (claytonia). I like the flowering head in the middle of the leaf. The tastes is sweet and succulent. This green is a great early and late season green that can handle cold weather and frost. Apparently, miners in the west used this plant as a basic green.




As far as the river trip goes, I must say it was exciting. Here is a blog by our trip leader
Dan Niemela (http://falconmtn.blogspot.com/2010/06/middle-fork-of-slammin.html). The Middle Fork of the Salmon is a river to be reckoned with when it is close to peak run-off. Every morning we drank enough coffee to get our confidence up, every afternoon we drank a few beers telling tales of rivers past and present, and every night we ate like kings.