The rain this week was so welcome -- and much needed. Lots of harvesting continued this week, this time from both inside the (now open) greenhouse and the outdoor gardens:
- first ripe tomato! (a cherry)
- 2 varieties of strawberries, 1 growing in hanging pots
- both snap and podded peas
- arugula
- both baby and full sized bok choy
- red mustard
- broccoli raab
- red Russian kale
- Dataglio chard
- garlic scapes
- purple topped turnips (both greens and bulbs)
- salad burnet
- lettuces
- collards
- mint, mint and more mint!
The first outdoor sowing of arugula and the third indoor sowing are at the same stage now. Think of it: our unheated greenhouse yielded us months of some vegetables that are only now coming into harvestable size outdoors.
The first zucchini are forming -- isn't it nice that in Spring we are happy to see zucchini coming along? I wonder how long looking forward to squash will last?
Tomatoes Gone Wild
Can we talk about tomatoes -- specifically, the fear I've developed about the ones planted in the greenhouse? They have become many-tentacled monsters. The Cherokee Purples and Big Cherry Tomato plants are 6' tall. The Romas, though the seed packet says they are indeterminate, are far more compact. I've staked and tied them up several times. I knew they needed another round last weekend, but I couldn't do it myself and couldn't get anyone to help me, busy as we all were.
And now another week has passed. The vines are obscuring the paths. Together, they form a dense forest from which I fear I will not return if I dare to enter into the heart of the bed. Like a fly falling into a pitcher plant, I'm sure I will be be consumed by them, instead of the other way around.
If after a few more days you don't see any more posts on this blog, you will be able to surmise my fate.
Why Is It So Crowded in the Garden?When we planted early, cold-tolerant and cool-loving plants, I anticipated that they would have finished their production already and been replaced by either younger plants of the same variety or warmer weather crops.
However, that's just not how things have unfolded. Instead, we've had two and three successive sowings of "spring" crops growing and producing at the same time! I don't like to pull out plants that continue to be productive. For example: I kept the first generation of bok choy going long after the second was producing, pulling the first out only as the third sowing was almost ready to have its first light harvest. And I'm only just about to pull out, blanch and freeze the first of now three sowings of collards, this earliest dating to October, 2008. So to reduce congestion, I either need to pull out older plants sooner, or let more time pass between sowings, or both.
I also need to anticipate that the cool-loving plants will more substantially overlap the warm weather plants than I had originally thought. How much overlap? I don't know... it probably will have to do with the amount of sunshine, rain and warmth -- in other words, upon the utterly fickle New England weather.
Photos: ©2009 Don Stevenson
