I never thought I’d see it! We have about a dozen broccoli and cauliflowers forming. As you can see the leaves are getting eaten up. I’ve picked off a good number of cabbage moths. I’ll probably get BT for the kale and turnips and things I’m planning on putting out soon.

Last week I watered on account of the lack of rain and I also applied some liquid kelp to the brassicas and tomatoes. I also spread some clover and vetch around the plants hoping they’ll germinate and provide a little nitrogen boost.

Still no tomatoes besides a few cherries, but there are lots of fruits we just need a decent rain. Who knows, maybe it’ll rain in august sometime.

Here is a bed in the back I tilled under. I planted rye late last summer (or was it fall?), but it didn’t take too well. I think I should have watered. Over to the left is a bed of garlic which must’ve died with the weird weather we had. I stupidly forgot to put any straw on top. Oh well. I talked to Herman the allium man a few weeks ago and I plan to do a fair amount of garlic this fall. UPDATE: I saw what I can only imagine is two little garlic sprouts when I was out today.

Thats the compost. For those of you that aren’t all that acquainted with compost I can assure you it doesn’t smell. I mean it used to smell really bad, especially when I put a bunch of flour in there, but if you do it right it is an aeorobic process and not an anaerobic one (like remember in gym class how they said jogging is aerobic and lifting weights is like anaerobic? it has something to do with oxygen, I guess).

Speaking of oxygen, I am also going to use some of this stuff to make compost tea, which believe it or not entails me putting some compost in a cloth bag and putting that in a bucket filled with water. Then you run one of those oxygenator deals you see in a fish tank and some time passes and you sleep and eat and everything, maybe a couple times, and then you’ve brewed yorself some nutritious tea*.

I have been slowly learning the dos and don’ts of compost and I think we’ll truck this stuff out to the big garden to start a new compost pile. I need a good compost book. I am reading Sir Albert Howard’s book
An Agricultural Testament about the indore process and whatnot. Maybe that’ll help.

Update: we planted some blue potatos in the bed pictured above. We are going to plant all our potatos at home.

*The tea is for plants. I probably won’t drink any.

Here you can see the fenugreek in the back just starting to sprout. Plus, there’s a better view of the onions that didn’t die over the winter, and the rest of the back garden.