We received these tomato spirals for our wedding:

They are basically curled plastic, which you attach to the top of a sturdy stake. As the vines grow, they use the plastic for support.

I put 6 of these in this spring; the stakes stand about 7′ tall. I’m anxious to see how they perform this season!

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These are planted in one of my perennial concrete beds. They are small, but super sweet. Chris has a patch in his half of the garden too. In a couple of years we’ll have enough for strawberry jam and pies…right now, most of them don’t even make it into the house before they are long gone

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I’m not quite sure this is what Peter pickled…but it was too interesting to pass up. (Note: correct spelling on the words ‘too’ and ‘to’ in the previous sentence).

Who wants to come over for stir fry later this summer?

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Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplant… Corn and Bean seeds are all neatly tucked in. I even picked up some virginia peanuts at 101 Market on a whim…I’ll post more about those later. We’ve never tried growing peanuts before, but I figure if they sell them at a nursery in Minnesota, somebody must have had luck with them here. It is officially growing season now!

In the picture above, you can see our abundant supply of spinach (behind the concrete bed, the entire left side of the front row), which needs to be picked and frozen. Also, snap peas to the right of the spinach and two rows behind. I planted those peas on March 17th, so I’m a bit surprised that they are still so small. They grow quite a bit every day though, and should be flowering within a week if we get some rain.

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One of the questions I get asked a lot about organic gardening is how I control weeds. The short answer… I pull them out. I find it therapeutic sitting in the garden on a warm sunny day, slowly making my way through the rows pulling weeds. Listening to the birds and the frogs singing, the occasional lawn mower or chainsaw in the distance…and of course the house behind us that always has KQRS playing. Our garden isn’t that big, and it only takes 10 minutes or so to get through an entire row.

The trick is to keep up on it – if you let things get out of hand, you’re going to end up with a nightmare. Last summer I ended up putting down sheets of black plastic in the rows to control the crabgrass, which had gotten really bad by mid-summer.

Also, I usually put down quite a bit of mulch once everything is planted. That helps a lot with weed control. I’m hoping to start mulching with grass clippings next week, after most of the plants are in.

This weekend is gorgeous, and the forecast looks to be warm for the next week so I decided to start seeding our summer crops today. Tomorrow we’re heading up to Gordon’s Greenhouse to pick up some tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. I decided not to mess with shelves and fluorescent lighting this year, so unfortunately we don’t have any of our own transplants. (I did start a few out on the deck when the weather was nice in March, but they never progressed to anything useful). I’m kind of sad to be missing some of our tomato and pepper favorites this year, but the greenhouse up the road has a terrific selection of heirloom veggies. Maybe we’ll end up finding something exciting and new!

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It’s not quite as (ridiculously) prolific as our spinach – but the lettuce is also off to a good start.

This is green romaine; I planted red romaine as well, which is coming along nicely. Lettuce and salad greens are some of the most profitable/money-saving vegetables you can grow in your garden (according to a few different sources, and it’s also something I heard in a discussion about selling at market once). Unfortunately, there’s a very short window before it gets too hot to grow lettuce in a typical garden and we’ve successfully grown large amounts of it. I tucked these behind the peas, so hopefully they will provide some shade and cooler temperatures during the day once it starts to warm up. Our soil is also a lot better this year after adding a few truck loads of compost, so hopefully that will make the lettuce (and everything else!) more successful.

I also put some leaf lettuce and greens into our cement blocks – but not too many of them germinated (the seeds were a few years old).

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Back in March, when we saw a streak of 80ºF days, I pulled out a 1/4 pound of Bloomsdale Long Standing spinach seeds from 2005 (seed source – Jordan Seeds). Figuring it was a long shot that some of them would sprout, I liberally sprinkled them over a 6-foot section of one of my beds, and gently raked them into the soil. I’m fairly certain that every single one of those seeds germinated:

I ended up transplanting a few of them down the row a bit, and they are doing very well also:

Yesterday we had our first big “harvest” from the garden – a giant bowl full of baby spinach, which I added to a vegan quiche. Looks like we’ll be eating spinach every day for a while!

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If you’re looking for an easy and attractive plant to grow, give comfrey a try!

In the picture, the comfrey is the large, dark-leaved plant.  The plant in front to the right is yarrow; behind is our Nichols plum tree.

Chris bought a few small roots of comfrey a couple years ago, and he has been splitting it and transplanting it ever since.  It is incredibly hardy, one of the first things to come up in the spring – and very fast growing.  It’s about the size now where it can be cut down and used as mulch.  In another month, it will be this size again and ready for a second cutting.

We have a few of these planted in our apple guild – they have deep roots which help break up the soil, and are supposed to help by bringing up nutrients from deep in the earth for the other plants to feed on.  Their leaves make great mulch, and they add a lot to the soil when composted.

You can see the size in comparison to our arbor and (still quite small) fruit trees.  Comfrey is also planted between the new trees in front, and it should fill in by next spring.

From Wikipedia:

Comfrey as a compost activator – include comfrey in the compost heap to add nitrogen and help to heat the heap. Comfrey should not be added in quantity as it will quickly break down into a dark sludgy liquid that needs to be balanced with more fibrous, carbon rich material.

Comfrey liquid fertilizer – can be produced by either rotting leaves down in rainwater for 4–5 weeks to produce a ready to use ‘comfrey tea’, or by stacking dry leaves under a weight in a container with a hole in the base. When the leaves decompose a thick black comfrey concentrate is collected. This must be diluted at 15:1 before use.

Comfrey as a mulch or side dressing – a 2 inch layer of comfrey leaves placed around a crop will slowly break down and release plant nutrients; it is especially useful for crops that need extra potassium, such as fruit bearers but also reported to do well for potatoes. Comfrey can be slightly wilted before application optionally but either way, avoid using flowering stems as these can root.

Comfrey potting mixture – originally devised to utilize peat, now environmental awareness has led to a leaf mold-based alternative being adopted instead; two year old, well decayed leaf mold should be used, this will absorb the nutrient-rich liquid released by the decaying comfrey. In a black plastic sack alternate 3-4 inch layers of leaf mold and chopped comfrey leaves. Add a little dolomitic limestone to slightly raise pH. Leave for between 2–5 months depending on the season, checking that it does not dry out or become too wet. The mixture is ready when the comfrey leaves have rotted and are no longer visible. Use as a general potting compost, although it is too strong for seedlings.

Comfrey can also be used in a salve for treating wounds and other skin ailments, though we have not tried this.  Note: do not eat (it’s fairly toxic).

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Speaking of chives…they’re about to flower:

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I’m just going to go ahead and blame mankind and global warming for this one.

Well, maybe I shouldn’t go quite that far…but I am going to point my finger at winter – or rather, lack there of.  With virtually no rain between mid-August and December and not so much as a dusting of snow nearly all winter, the only thing that survived in my perennial flower/herb beds were the chives. Catnip and Sage – gone. (Who kills off catnip and sage? Sheesh…) 15+ Shasta Daisies planted in the beds and throughout the garden – gone. Thyme – gone. (Though that isn’t too surprising, as it is zone 5…but it overwintered 2010/2011 just fine). Black Eyed Susans, Silver Mound, Butterfly Weed, Salvia…well, you get the picture. Strawberries.

So I stopped by Gordon’s Greenhouse on my way home today and picked up some plants to fill the void:

Lavender (French and English), Thyme, Rosemary, Sage, and Alaska Daisies.

In hindsight, I probably should have been watering the garden weekly through December, since fall was fairly mild. I am certain it’s not the raised beds (at first I was concerned that they got too cold, since they are edged with cement), because most of these things were also planted in the “garden proper” and also didn’t survive.

As the old proverb goes, “If at first you don’t succeed…”

(Picture of Puck for good luck!)

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