Lettuce Coming And Going

How can one garden without growing lettuce?  Controlling our food supply was one of the forces pushing our early efforts in he garden.  Having spent many winters reading about the lifestyle of Scott and Helen Nearing, clearly defined what I was looking for.  We have their book featuring the stone greenhouse but our version never got built.  We do manage to grow our own lettuce for several months of the year.

Rabbits and lettuce both growing in the same area presents predator problems.  Wire fencing bent into cages is our first line of defense.  Unfortunately, baby bunnies zip through the two inch wide openings like no barrier exists.  Mobile home skirting was fashioned into a low wall.  For many years the combination of the wall and cages have protected our plants.  Once a woodchuck burrowed under the wall but found the cage array troublesome.  Only temporary damage done was the yellow subsoil and stones that were left on top of my carefully made dark soil.

The old plants flowering and making seed now need to be cleared out.  We make no attempt to save seed but sometimes find new plants growing at the base of the compost pile or where the previous year's crop grew.  Once the lettuce bolts, the leaves become bitter.

These plants are growing one bed behind the others.  It has provided us with great fresh salad material but is now largely past.  A second strip of wire fencing was added around the bottom edge.  Rotated 90 degrees, the openings went from 2 X 4 to 2 X 2.  The young rabbits were effectively denied entrance to the tasty young plants inside but the extra wire made the cage heavy and awkward to remove.  Simply placing it on edge solved that problem.

These plants will serve as our current source of fresh lettuce.  The combination of a shade cover over the wire cage and the lower nighttime temperatures will keep these plants usable for a longer period of time.  Composting old lettuce is unpleasant but it is part of having enough.

Here is the next generation of salad supplies.  Summer heat prevents lettuce seed from  germinating so these plants were started in the basement.  Their potting soil was also stored in the relative cool there.  Four seeds are placed in each pot and some of this day with drizzle will be used to replant with but a single plant in each pot.  Holding these plants in the pots will slow their growth until they are needed in the garden.  When the time is right they will be planted out and our supply of fresh greens will continue into fall.   A new tray of seeds could be started now but this whole process is getting a little old.  The first seeds were put to soil in March driven by my need for winter to end.  Now we have no season extenders so our plants will be ended by frost.  My preference is for that first frost to find my garden soil bare.  What is missed from late harvests is offset by a lack of cleaning up the black slime that follows frost on plants left in the garden.

Now This Is Spring In The Garden!

We did have frost this morning, but the rest of the day was perfect for being in the garden.  It's sunny, but not too hot.  Ed's lettuce that got zapped by hard frost before is making a comeback.  Even the plants that I cut back hard are making a comeback.  The plants are making new little leaves.

Ed's tomato plants are big enough to spend the nice part of the day outside. Soon they can be moved to bigger pots.

Ed spent the day working on a project he had hoped to finish last fall. Today he moved the clove currants. Tomorrow I think he will have the bed finished!  That  will be a great feeling.   Actually every thing that we can get done makes such a big improvement  a wonderful feeling of accomplishment comes with the effort!

Ed's bloodroot not only came back this year, but it multiplied over the winter.   We have to keep an eye on it. The plants flower and go to seed very quickly. Ed's watering after the plants went dormant paid off.

The frost didn't make much of an impression on my squirrel corn and in spite of its name it didn't get eaten either.  The plant looks great!

We have some gorgeous blue Siberian squill growing in a place where we did not know we had planted it.  It will take some patience to separate it from the weeds but who could not love those gorgeous blue flowers?

I saved the best surprise for last.  I had circle onions also known as curly chives for years.  Somehow in the last couple of years we lost them.  I was sure they were gone for good, but today I walked by this plant and stopped  dead in my tracks.  There way down at the end of one of the garden beds, growing in the stone path was a curly chive plant.  How it could be growing there so far away from where they had been planted before is a mystery to me, but I am thrilled to have noticed it.  Imagine if it had been pulled as a weed by mistake.  It will be moved to a nice spot and well marked.  Now that we have been reunited, I don't want to lose them again. Maybe if I'm lucky they will send up a nice purple flower for me come July.

Beating Back The Wild Things

It's a plain fact that we are being overrun here.  All the rain has served to keep us out of the garden and it has given the weeds the opportunity to run wild in the garden.   Somewhere hidden beneath the grass and other weeds are Ed's beautiful planting beds and  stone paths.  Ed worked on this area today.  He plans to replant peas here.  We have the seed and sometimes we can get a late crop of peas if the weather cooperates.

I chose  to search for desirable plants in this bed .  I uncovered some dianthus, wood betony, closed gentian and a hollyhock.  I caught sight of Ed's rose, but I did not get it uncovered yet. Digging out the grass is slow work and looking for hidden treasures slows progress down even more.

It's not only the weeds that have gone wild.  The trumpet vine has completely engulfed the golden glows.  A few small golden flowers have managed to break through the vines to catch some sunlight anyway.  Other plants in the area of the trumpet vine have not been seen at all.

Trumpet vine tendrils are marching across  our gravel parking spot.  New runners are popping up in the gravel at some distance from the original plant.  One can't help feeling that parking there for too long will result in a car covered with vines.  However, I can't deny that I love to watch the hummingbirds  zip around the trumpet vine chasing each other at dizzying speeds.  As long as the red flowers that they find so attractive are blooming, this vine gone wild is safe.

Still there is great beauty in the garden.  This Salmon star lily and its tantalizing fragrance is so attractive to a hummingbird moth that I was actually able to get this great picture.  We feast on fresh summer squash, basil, lettuce and the now ripening tomatoes.  Today in the garden was great!

Outside ... Freeze Frame, Indoors... Action!

Outside we have more snow and more cold. My pretty, hardy, little Dutch iris are just sitting there, closed tight, waiting for things to warm up at least a bit. They only have one chance to bloom and they will wait until the conditions are right. I hope the first blossom will open soon. I'm impatiently watching.

Inside things are on the move. Ed has set up his lights and planted his first seeds. The lettuce likes it cool, so the basement temperature is fine. Other seeds like it warmer so they have a bottom heat pad and a plastic dome.

Baby lettuce plants raise my spirits and ease the pain in my wallet from buying lettuce ever so slightly. A package of lettuce seeds and a pot of dirt is a better investment these days than putting money in the bank. It will be weeks before we get to eat our own lettuce, but we are off to a good start.

Safe inside a plastic dome, with warmth from below and light from above, Ed's China aster plants are growing nicely. Last year we started two kinds of asters, but we lost track of which was which. One kind was a disaster, but we don't know which one. This year we are planting one kind. There will be no room for confusion at least where the asters are concerned!

Hummingbird Hello!

A welcome rainy day brought a lovely surprise. A hummingbird stopped and hovered just outside the living room window. What a terrific first hummingbird sighting . It was almost as if he just stopped to say, "Hello,I'm back".

The whole garden is happy with the rain. Now we begin our days of salads from the garden. We can glide right past salad greens in the grocery store with glee. The new lettuce and our fall planted spinach are beginning to produce. The house salad here requires a tour of the garden. I pick a few lettuce leaves , some spinach,a little Good King Henry,chives, perhaps some sweet cicely or chervil, Johnny jump up flowers or violets, a sprig of French tarragon, some salad burnett. With a salad like that a little raspberry vinaigrette is all we need for dressing. Now that's a garden salad! But something is missing, I need to plant my arugula. I'll move that to the top of the list for tomorrow.

Catch Fly And Rain

This picture of catch fly was taken yesterday. I got my first catch fly from Mary Jo. Anything that attracts butterflies and hummingbirds attracts me. This interesting plant gets its name from the sticky sections on the stems that trap small insects.They are the brown areas about 1/4 inch long in the picture. The plants self seed every year. The hummingbird loves these bright pink flowers.

It's been raining all day. We've enjoyed watching rain falling on the garden from the comfort of the living room. Ed has the last of the plants in, and is looking forward to getting back to the shade garden wall. I still have a few more seeds to plant, and plenty of weeds to pull. A walk through the garden reveals strawberries, spinach,radishes, mesclun, lettuce and fresh herbs are ready for picking. The catnip drying has begun. I'm beginning to dry herbs for tea. New flowers are blooming every day. It's a glorious time for the garden!

Fall Salad Greens

This is our fall planted bed of spinach. It gives us a few leaves for great salads now, but will winter over and produce spinach very early in the spring. The plants do bolt quickly, but it is so wonderful to have spinach so early. We have had considerable critter trouble with our salad crops. That is the reason for the cage and the metal border around the bed. Selfish as we are we want to eat these greens ourselves.

Here we have a nice lettuce mix. We are enjoying having lettuce for salads now, knowing we will be using our calculator to see if we can afford it in the grocery store very soon.

Salad Days

It was cool last night, almost too cool. Today we had some gentle rain, no lightning, no thunder, no fierce wind, just showers. It was wonderful.

The lettuce is in seventh heaven. It is crispy and fresh and gorgeous. It was a pleasure to go out right before dinner to pick the makings for our dinner salad. I like to mix the lettuce with some spinach from the bed next door. After that I get a little more exotic. Some lemon basil, chives, Johnny-jump-up blossoms, tarragon, and sweet marjoram get added to the lettuce and spinach. With all those flavors in the salad, a simple dressing is all that is needed. A raspberry vinaigrette is very nice.

These young lettuce plants will keep us in salads for some time. We have seeds planted for their replacements. Our salad days are here!