Memorial Day Weekend! 5-24-24

I’m back from a two week road trip and getting my yard in gear! Apparently it rained about every day I was gone. I missed the asparagus, but the strawberries are going buck wild.

You can see how well my brassicas liked this! Here you see Brussels sprouts, three kinds of cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. Across the way I have sugar peas climbing up the trellis, I’m about a week or two away from a very nice stir fry, since my acres of garlic are thinking about sending up scapes!

I’m not sure what’s up with my carrots and beets. They’re taking their sweet time, and maybe things haven’t germinated like they ought to have. I’m trying to exercise patience but there’s a beet terrine I really want to try.

I missed the asparagus in the two weeks I was gone, but the strawberries are going buck wild.

I have solid crops of lemon balm, oregano, anise hyssop, various mints, comfrey, borage, garlic chives, and garlic in the herb beds. The lavender, rosemary, and dill are poking along. I suspect the dill drowned and that something dug in the rosemary. We’ll see. I spent some time out there today while potting up some sage and thyme and I see that there’s a volunteer raspberry bramble coming up behind the rain barrel! I’m going to let that do its thing, far be it from me to discourage any delicious berries.

I had to hill up potatoes when I got home! Two pots did not germinate from the microtubers I bought this year, but the others are happy. I may have to hill up again soon! Potatoes are still cheap, but I like the novelty of growing them. You can too, I outline how blessedly simple it is to grow potatoes in a lazy, no-dig manner here.

I did start tomatoes this year, but I also bought some plants from Schuring Greenhouse the other day to get a jump on things. I’m going to have them spilling out of the raised stand-up bed on the east side of the house. The varieties I chose are Mortgage Lifter, Amish Paste, and Brandywine, all heirlooms. I chose Brandywine in honor of my dad, who absolutely loved them.

I have ginned up a little contraption with hooks and some garden netting to hopefully keep the deer and the birds out of them, we’ll see how well it works. It shouldn’t impeded the growth of the tomato plants but I do hope it impedes the marauding freeloader wildlife.

My front steps are happy today – I potted up some more basil and cilantro and two aloe starts that came home with me from New Orleans. Now I have parsley, chives, cilantro, basil for cooking and aloe for when I inevitably burn myself on some hot pan.

There’s wild catnip at the bottom of the stairs, and I think my kitties will enjoy a little of that this evening. It will be a grand night for reading on the porch!